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PoliGAF 2016 |OT12| The last days of the Republic

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E

Emarv

Member
Holmes said:
New positive ad from Clinton, don't yet know where it's airing.

https://t.co/vku1oNyxlk
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Real talk, she needs to wear this collared button down look more often. She wore it during that video at the DNC convention. She looks way better in it. Casual, dapper and...kind of sexy sleek like Claire Underwood.

I know, I know, critiquing what she wears and whatnot. But this is a great look for her and she should do it more!
 
K

kingkitty

Member
jmdajr said:
old?

Ted Cruz: The Ultimate Humiliation: Having To Make Cold Calls For Trump

cbb5e3b9ec564f419d170de7e11cf75f_34b8499b53efb3634d6ebbaff14a758e_1_www_large_thumb.jpeg
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digg is still alive??
 
TheLaughingStock

TheLaughingStock

Member
L

Lucky Forward

Member
Michelle Obama sets her garden in stone

First lady Michelle Obama is making sure that whoever inhabits the White House next doesn’t rip out her iconic vegetable garden — at least not without a big fuss.

On Wednesday afternoon, Obama unveiled a much bigger version of the garden, which uses concrete, stone and steel to make it a more permanent fixture on the South Lawn. The updates are seen not just as preserving Obama’s garden — recognized globally as a symbol of local food — but also as a way to dissuade, say, a President Donald Trump from scrapping it the way Ronald Reagan tore out Jimmy Carter's solar panels after he moved into the White House.
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Soon we might see first lady Melania out there planting turnips in her bib overalls.
 
I

IggyChooChoo

Member
Ignatz Mouse said:
I hope he does well enough in perception that they don't ditch him, but bad enough not to move the needle.

Keep trying to bail out the sinking boat, GOP!
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It's so late, I'm not convinced changing the allocation could outweigh another bad debate performance. So I hope he does horrendous and GOP voters get demoralized and stay home. It's the only prayer we have at taking back the House, which is my dearest dream.
 
B

Box of Kittens

Banned
Geg said:
Out of all of those I think WV is the most surprising. What exactly happened?
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Clinton's maps are interesting to me because they represent something of a transition era. The old New Deal coalition was no longer a viable way for Democrats to win elections and what we would call the Obama coalition was just starting to emerge but not yet sufficient by itself to win. Clinton basically won combining the new coalition with just enough of the old one to produce a map that is quite different from earlier Democratic wins (see Kennedy 1960 or Carter 1976) yet includes a few results that would be seen as very anomalous today (such as Kentucky and West Virginia).

Coverage of the 1992 election is neat to watch because of the reactions to certain state wins that would be seen as normal now but were considered somewhat novel at the time.

Clinton wins "strongly Republican" New Jersey. (the comments on Connecticut a minute or so later are also interesting).

Clinton wins New Hampshire and Vermont. Their histories of voting Republican are noted.

In reality these states had been trending Democratic already, people just weren't noticing because Mondale and Dukakis lost their elections by large enough margins that these states were staying in the Republican column. Likewise, Clinton's strong performances in 1992 and 1996 were hiding the movement of states like West Virginia towards the Republicans (movement which accelerated when Gore was the nominee for reasons already discussed).

Captain Pants said:
Seeing this makes me wonder why Indiana is so deep red considering it's neighbors. I know it went blue in 2008, but outside of that, it's solid red. Having never been there, I'd think it'd be similar to Ohio and Iowa in terms of demographics, yet it's not a swing state.
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Others have addressed this (and in particular the 538 article is a really good exploration of the issue), but I do want to touch on a few things as a native Hoosier. Traditionally, Democrats ran strongest in Northwest Indiana, which is influenced strongly by Chicago and often feels something of a disconnect with the rest of the state, South Bend (heavily Catholic), and Southern Indiana (which is in many ways Southern in character and voted Democratic like the South), while the rest of the state, including Indianapolis, voted mostly Republican.

Over time the coalitions have shifted. Northwest Indiana and South Bend have remained Democratic territory, while Southern Indiana largely moved into Republican territory, again much like the South. Indianapolis itself has seen increasing Democratic strength (although its suburbs remain heavily Republican) and Democrats do increasingly well in the many college towns throughout the state. Obama won in 2008 by turning out the vote well in all of these places while holding down his losses elsewhere. He completely out-organized McCain in the state and it was just enough to pull off a narrow win.

Zukkoyaki said:
Isn't Indiana like suuuuuper religious and leans red because of social issues?
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Sort of. Indiana is a state (Kansas is another) where the Republican Party is a somewhat uneasy coalition between business interests and religious conservatives. Part of the reason the Democrats stand a good chance of winning the gubernatorial election this cycle is that Pence has pushed the religious conservative agenda so hard that he's alienated the business wing.
 
B

balladofwindfishes

Member
TheLaughingStock said:
That's pretty good. I wonder if he'll bring up how much money Wall Street and hedge funds have donated to Clinton campaign initiatives in a debate setting: http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin...ch-money-have-wall-street-and-hedge-funds-gi/

Could be highly effective alongside a change message because $60 million + should be a significant heavy dose of influence on policy.
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Trump's biggest hurdle right now is selling himself as being qualified to be president. Hillary doesn't really matter towards his numbers and nothing he says about her will change the race at all.
 
V

Voysa Reezun

Banned
Doc Holliday said:
As if the stakes couldn't get any higher....

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/paul-ryan-budget-congress-229216




Go fuck yourself Ryan
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This is why Ryan's willing to risk being seen with Trump. He has rightly judged that being Speaker is a thankless job and he'll never be able to win a primary with his record of having to negotiate with Democrats in 2020 or 2024 or whatever.

His best bet to fuck over the poors is to hope Trump finds a way to win and then ram through a country-killing budget.

Above all, including his reputation, Ryan most cares about killing poor people.
 
A

Abinash117

Member
Doc Holliday said:
As if the stakes couldn't get any higher....

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/paul-ryan-budget-congress-229216




Go fuck yourself Ryan
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Looks like a last ditch effort to salvage the campaign, and try to get some Republicans on board or a strategy to get dissatisfied Republicans to vote mostly for the down-ticket despite knowing Trump has very little chance. Lucky this could benefit Democrats and be used as away to get dem-leaners to vote to prevent this from happening.
 
I

Ignatz Mouse

Banned
Box of Kittens said:
Sort of. Indiana is a state (Kansas is another) where the Republican Party is a somewhat uneasy coalition between business interests and religious conservatives. Part of the reason the Democrats stand a good chance of winning the gubernatorial election this cycle is that Pence has pushed the religious conservative agenda so hard that he's alienated the business wing.
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Indeed. I lot of Indianapolis business folks were pissed that the religious-backed anti-gay bill threatened their livelihood.
 
P

pigeon

Banned
Cesare Borgia said:
Scott Walker blueprint. That's what you're supposed to do when you have control of congress - push your agenda, satisfy your base, and give your members something to campaign on. Hopefully democrats follow that next time they win the House/senate/WH.
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I mean, they did last time, and it worked out pretty badly for a lot of those Democrats. But it was still the right choice. We must honor Blanche Lincoln's sacrifice for all of America.
 
E

Emarv

Member
Trump is the worst presidential nominee in a century, but at least he led to the systematic destruction of Cruz. Thanks, Trump!
 
U

User 463088

Banned
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/times-recommends-hillary-clinton-for-president/2296789

Good endorsement from the Tampa Bay Times

Trump's grim view of a declining America that has lost standing in the world is at odds with reality. The billionaire's tax cuts would primarily benefit the wealthy. He wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act but offers no serious alternative. His pledges to round up and deport 11 million undocumented immigrants and to force Mexico to pay for a border wall are nationalistic nonsense. His Rust Belt promises to revive steel mills and reinvigorate the coal industry are fantasies, and he is in denial about climate change.

But Trump's hostile takeover of the Republican Party makes this election unlike any other in our lifetimes. It is not about the size of tax cuts, or the scope of government regulation, or the details of health care reform. At its core, this election is about uniting behind a tested, thoroughly vetted candidate and preventing a dangerous demagogue from taking office.
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F

Felix Lighter

Member
Ha ha, Cruz should have stuck with the investment he made during the convention because now there is nothing to gain and lots to lose with this sniveling hypocrite look.
 
W

whyamihere

Banned
WTHR/HPI Indiana Poll LV

Bayh: 42
Young: 41
Some Libertarian: 8

They had the race at 44-40 last month. Because Indiana's laws (and the lack of polling in general this election), I doubt we get much more polling out of here before the election.
 
M

Manmademan

Member
Jeels said:
Not arguing, genuinely interested, because I have been on both sides of the debate and haven't really been able to back it up with actual data - receipts?
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That data is all over the place and has been for decades. Private schools rarely outperform public ones, and when they do, the differences between them frequently can be attributed to self selection. As in: charters and private schools tend to attract parents who actually care about their child's education. Private schools also have the luxury of being able to kick out children that don't meet their standards- behavioral, performance, etc. Public schools rarely go for the expulsion route unless we're talking egregious violations bordering on criminal charges.

But to be more specific, Charter schools were started here in Pennsylvania under Tom Ridge, republican governor around 1997ish or so. (Ridge later left the governorship around 01 to work under the GWB administration). Charters were a plan implemented by his administration and the general assembly after an attempt to implement vouchers failed.

Charters if you aren't familiar with them are privately run but publicly financed schools that operate independently within a district. As of this year Pennsylvania has 168 of them, mostly clustered in areas with struggling school systems like Philadelphia and Chester PA.

Nationally, there was a 2013 study that compared charter schools in 26 states and NYC (not including Pennsylvania, for some reason) and what did that study find?

In math, the 2013 study found there is no significant difference in learning between charter students and those in traditional public schools, as compared with the 2009 study that found charter school students covered 22 fewer days of material than their traditional counterparts.
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There was a separate report done in 2011 on Pennsylvania specifically that found more or less the same thing:

In the 2011 Pennsylvania report, the CREDO staff found that from 2007-10, 31 percent of bricks-and-mortar charter schools performed significantly worse than their traditional public school counterparts in reading, but 100 percent of cyber charters were significantly worse. In math, the study showed 38 percent of bricks-and-mortar charter schools performed significantly worse, but again, all cyber charters were significantly worse.

Conversely, in the 2011 Pennsylvania study, 38 percent of bricks-and-mortar charter schools performed significantly better in reading than their traditional public school counterparts, while none of cyber charter schools were significantly better. In math, 25 percent of bricks-and-mortar charter schools performed significantly better than their traditional counterparts, while none of the cyber charters performed significantly better.
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That data comes from an article Pittsburgh Post gazette composed here http://www.post-gazette.com/news/state/2013/06/26/Study-Pa-in-bottom-three-for-charter-school-scores/stories/201306260122

Note that Charters have the same advantages that private schools do re: self selection and being able to simply not accept special needs students or those with behavioral problems. Those are simply funneled into the public school system, so "only" 38% of total schools having better performance in reading and 25% of schools having better performance in math than Public schools is pretty terrible.

On an aggregate basis statewide? they're awful:

“In terms of school performance, in 2013 the state changed how it measures academic performance of schools from Adequate Yearly progress to a School Performance Score on the new School Performance Profiles. Although the measures have changed on average, charter schools, particularly cyber charter schools, still perform academically worse than other traditional public schools. For 2012-2013, based on a scale of 100, the average SPP score for traditional public schools was 77.1, for charter schools 66.4 and for cyber charter schools 46.8. None of the 14 cyber charter schools had SPP scores over 70, considered the minimal level of academic success and 8 cyber charter schools had SPP scores below 50.

These results mirror results in both the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 school year where traditional public schools performed better than charter schools and significantly better than cyber charter schools in terms of achieving Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), the federal school performance standard established under the federal No Child Left Behind law. AYP is determined by student academic performance on state reading and math assessments (PSSAs).

For 2010-11, while 94% of school districts met AYP, 75% of public schools met AYP. In contrast, only 61% of charter schools met AYP and only two of the 12 cyber charter schools met AYP.

The percentage of students performing at grade level in Math and Reading in order for a school to achieve AYP increased from 67% of students in Math in 2010-2011 to 78% in 2011-2012 and increased from 72% in Reading in 2010-2011 to 81% in 2011-2012. This resulted in reducing the percentage of all public schools achieving AYP in 2011-12 with larger declines for charter and cyber charter schools.

For 2011-12, while 61% of school districts met AYP, 50% of public schools met AYP. In stark contrast, only 29% of charter schools met AYP and none of the 12 cyber charter schools met AYP.
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https://dianeravitch.net/2014/04/23/pennsylvania-1-of-every-6-charters-succeeds-cyber-charters-are-low-performing/



The Washington Post put together a similar article that goes into this, concentrating on PA specifically:

1. Most are not helping kids. Rep. Roebuck’s new report shows that for the 2012-23 academic year, “the average SPP [School Performance Profile] score for traditional public schools was 77.1,” but for charter schools it was 66.4, and cyber-charter schools came in at a low 46.8. What’s more, “none of the 14 cyber charter schools had SPP scores over 70, considered the minimal level of academic success and 8 cyber charter schools had SPP scores below 50.”
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in aggregate, charter schools performed worse on state standardized test scores than the public schools do.

5. Lack of transparency and accountability. Charter schools are publicly funded, but often act like private entities. Here in Pennsylvania, the largest charter school operator has been fighting a right-to-know request for years in the courts so that he doesn’t have to reveal his publicly funded salary (data that is publicly available for traditional public schools). In 2012, Gov. Corbett and the Republican controlled legislature tried to introduce a bill that would have exempted all charters from the state’s sunshine laws. [See “Where are the Real Republicans?”] In California, charter school operators have even argued in court that they are a private entity and should not be treated as a public institution. [Ed Week, 10-7-13] We desperately need charter reform legislation that emphasizes accountability and transparency, just as we demand from traditional public schools. [See the top 5 reasons the current proposed legislation fails to do both.]
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there is a significant and substantial problem with transparency and accountability in regards to where the money actually goes in regards to charter schools. Charters spend VASTLY more money on administrative expenses than public schools do,

http://articles.philly.com/2016-08-...hools-traditional-public-schools-expenditures

Charter-Schools.jpg


and will fight to keep their books closed to prevent disclosure.

I mentioned before that private schools and charters are permitted to be more selective in their enrollment:

6. Skimming and weed-out strategies. Dr. Kevin Welner, professor of education policy at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has found that charter schools “can shape their student enrollment in surprising ways.” He has identified a “Dirty Dozen” methods used by charter schools “that often decrease the likelihood of students enrolling with a disfavored set of characteristics, such as students with special needs, those with low test scores, English learners, or students in poverty.” [NEPC Brief, 5-5-13] Think it’s not happening in Pennsylvania? Consider the Green Woods charter school in Philadelphia that made its application available to prospective families only one day per year, in hard copy form only, at a suburban country club not accessible by public transportation. [Newsworks, 9-12-12] When charter schools overtly, or even unconsciously, urge students to leave – for instance, by not offering services for special education students or English language learners – they send those students back to traditional public schools.
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Even with the ability to weed out problem students, those with english as a second language, those in poverty, those with special needs...charters are STILL not outperforming public schools across the board.

Also worth considering:

8. Drain resources from struggling districts. Charter tuition payments are causing a huge financial drain for many districts – $53 million in Pittsburgh this academic year alone. With the state’s massive defunding of public schools, Governor Tom Corbett slashed reimbursement to districts for charter school tuition payments: that cost Pittsburgh $14.8 million in 2012 and continues to cause mounting financial harm. [See “Charter Reform Now”] And remember, when a couple students leave a classroom to attend a charter school, that classroom still has to keep the lights on, and pay the teacher and the heating bill: the math is not a simple moving of dollars from one place to another. What’s more, there is evidence that charters, especially cyber charters, are enrolling more students who were previously home-schooled, thus increasing costs for school districts. [NCSPE Brief on Cyber and Home School Charter Schools]
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Charters simply subtract existing funds from school district budgets here to fund themselves. there was no increase in funding to support them. Their existence makes it significantly harder for public schools to exist and has led to closures and layoffs. Moody's cited the existence of charter schools as the #1 problem for solvency of the Philadelphia school district, and the Chester school district owes more money to charters than it actually brings in per year in taxes.

The things are terrible, and the only reason they exist is because conservatives continue to peddle the fiction that somehow the private sector is better at running education than the public sector is- when all evidence has shown that performance is equivalent or worse, and they're fiscally irresponsible.
 
P

PBY

Banned
Manmademan said:
That data is all over the place and has been for decades. Private schools rarely outperform public ones, and when they do, the differences between them frequently can be attributed to self selection. As in: charters and private schools tend to attract parents who actually care about their child's education. Private schools also have the luxury of being able to kick out children that don't meet their standards- behavioral, performance, etc. Public schools rarely go for the expulsion route unless we're talking egregious violations bordering on criminal charges.

But to be more specific, Charter schools were started here in Pennsylvania under Tom Ridge, republican governor around 1997ish or so. (Ridge later left the governorship around 01 to work under the GWB administration). Charters were a plan implemented by his administration and the general assembly after an attempt to implement vouchers failed.

Charters if you aren't familiar with them are privately run but publicly financed schools that operate independently within a district. As of this year Pennsylvania has 168 of them, mostly clustered in areas with struggling school systems like Philadelphia and Chester PA.

Nationally, there was a 2013 study that compared charter schools in 26 states and NYC (not including Pennsylvania, for some reason) and what did that study find?



There was a separate report done in 2011 on Pennsylvania specifically that found more or less the same thing:



That data comes from an article Pittsburgh Post gazette composed here http://www.post-gazette.com/news/state/2013/06/26/Study-Pa-in-bottom-three-for-charter-school-scores/stories/201306260122

Note that Charters have the same advantages that private schools do re: self selection and being able to simply not accept special needs students or those with behavioral problems. Those are simply funneled into the public school system, so "only" 38% of total schools having better performance in reading and 25% of schools having better performance in math than Public schools is pretty terrible.

The Washington Post put together a similar article that goes into this, concentrating on PA specifically:



in aggregate, charter schools performed worse on state standardized test scores than the public schools do.



there is a significant and substantial problem with transparency and accountability in regards to where the money actually goes in regards to charter schools. Charters spend VASTLY more money on administrative expenses than public schools do,

http://articles.philly.com/2016-08-...hools-traditional-public-schools-expenditures

Charter-Schools.jpg


and will fight to keep their books closed to prevent disclosure.

I mentioned before that private schools and charters are permitted to be more selective in their enrollment:



Even with the ability to weed out problem students, those with english as a second language, those in poverty, those with special needs...charters are STILL not outperforming public schools across the board.

Also worth considering:



Charters simply subtract existing funds from school district budgets here to fund themselves. there was no increase in funding to support them. Their existence makes it significantly harder for public schools to exist and has led to closures and layoffs. Moody's cited the existence of charter schools as the #1 problem for solvency of the Philadelphia school district, and the Chester school district owes more money to charters than it actually brings in per year in taxes.

The things are terrible, and the only reason they exist is because conservatives continue to peddle the fiction that somehow the private sector is better at running education than the public sector is- when all evidence has shown that performance is equivalent or worse, and they're fiscally irresponsible.
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I need to read more, but "terrible" seems like waaaay too hard/definitive for these schools (given what I've read on them in the past, despite their many issues)

This issue is somewhat like the issue of gentrification for me, I can see reasonable positions on both sides.
 
E

Ecotic

Member
Trump will be a net benefit if he loses badly and is a drag down ballot. An argument could be made that he single-handedly gifted an easy victory to Democrats when the race should have been close. I hate the damage he's done this year, but a flipped Supreme Court will last a long time. Hillary's victory this year will change the Obama Presidency into the Obama era. Trump is a very useful idiot.
 
T

thestopsign

Member
Grief.exe said:
Lol I just had the same random thought the other day, I don't think anyone even replied to the post as it deviated from the discussion so greatly. I think it's worth discussing though.
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Manmademan said:
There's several.

Republicans in general believe in "small government" and low taxation, which means slashing budgets wherever they can- education is frequently one of the first and easiest targets.

Republicans also tend to cling to the theory that public education doesn't work and the private sector does a better job of education, despite all of the evidence showing the opposite. This leads them to push things like school voucher programs and charter school programs, which will absolutely wreck a public school system faster than anything else.

Finally, many of them are simply racist and give no fucks at all about minority school districts, so pointing out that poor districts full of black kids are barely functional as a result of the above simply results in shrugged shoulders and ranting about welfare queens, absentee fathers, and the faults of black culture.
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Revolver said:
I remember reading how 9 out of 10 of the least educated states vote Republican.

"Republican-governed states have adopted cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations while slashing education budgets as a standard policy."

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/11...education-states-america-vote-republican.html

I hear a lot of resentment for education spending from the Republican people I know. How it's a waste of money to spend on schools and "they never have enough" and so forth.
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AntraxSuicide said:
You get Mississippi. We've got huge problems with emigration and poor conditions scaring people away.



People here don't value education at all. My high school had a field trip every year to the local plants so we could all see where we'd end up working. No one ever thought it was weird that we were expected to work for shit pay and long hours until we died. Of my graduating class in high school, only 4 of us went to college. That was typical.

Once you hit 18 here, you'd better be able to pay your own way. And that frequently means no time for college (of any kind).
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All I ever hear about is how it is unfair to tax the rich so much because they personally earned that money. Why is that a problem when you are not affected by that? The majority of the south never even have the opportunity to become rich to be affected by tax increases for the rich. They don't have the opportunity because their schooling doesn't push them. They don't have the opportunity because their parents don't believe in the system enough to push them. They don't have the opportunity because every governmental failure is seen as a reason to decrease funding rather than increase funding to fix the failure. "Our school systems suck, might as well not even fund them at all!" It really is up to self motivation of a young, malleable mind to make it for him/her self. The odds are stacked against them from the start.

Antrax has it right that anyone that actually does succeed either in high school or college will immediately want to leave the state, thus further perpetuating the problem of lack of education within the state.

Just another side note: As I was walking off my site for lunch today, I overheard someone asking his mate why the government should be entitled to 40% of his pay check. If he is actually being taxed at a 40% rate as an hourly construction worker in Mississippi he should figure out what he is doing wrong with his taxes. I kind of doubt he even makes it to a 25% tax rate with any of his income. State taxes are super low as well, so that wouldn't even make up for it.
 
T

thefro

Member
Captain Pants said:
Seeing this makes me wonder why Indiana is so deep red considering it's neighbors. I know it went blue in 2008, but outside of that, it's solid red. Having never been there, I'd think it'd be similar to Ohio and Iowa in terms of demographics, yet it's not a swing state.
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There's not a really big liberal city in Indiana ala Chicago, nor the volume of mid-sized Dem-leaning cities that there are in Ohio or Michigan.

I think some of it is a function of the candidates, since Indiana's had Democratic governors and Senators during that whole time. There's a good chance Indiana will have 2 Dem Senators & a Dem Governor after this year's election.
 
P

Paskil

Member
That Atlantic endorsement is hot fucking fire.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, has no record of public service and no qualifications for public office. His affect is that of an infomercial huckster; he traffics in conspiracy theories and racist invective; he is appallingly sexist; he is erratic, secretive, and xenophobic; he expresses admiration for authoritarian rulers, and evinces authoritarian tendencies himself. He is easily goaded, a poor quality for someone seeking control of America’s nuclear arsenal. He is an enemy of fact-based discourse; he is ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution; he appears not to read.

...

In its founding statement, The Atlantic promised that it would be “the organ of no party or clique,” and our interest here is not to advance the prospects of the Democratic Party, nor to damage those of the Republican Party. If Hillary Clinton were facing Mitt Romney, or John McCain, or George W. Bush, or, for that matter, any of the leading candidates Trump vanquished in the Republican primaries, we would not have contemplated making this endorsement. We believe in American democracy, in which individuals from various parties of different ideological stripes can advance their ideas and compete for the affection of voters. But Trump is not a man of ideas. He is a demagogue, a xenophobe, a sexist, a know-nothing, and a liar. He is spectacularly unfit for office, and voters—the statesmen and thinkers of the ballot box—should act in defense of American democracy and elect his opponent.
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Much more at the link.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...lary-clinton-and-against-donald-trump/501161/
 
I

IggyChooChoo

Member
Emarv said:
Trump is the worst presidential nominee in a century, but at least he led to the systematic destruction of Cruz. Thanks, Trump!
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Trump has caused such an insane amount of damage on the conservative side, it is sometimes hard to see the scale of it. Here's an incomplete list of people and ideas he's hurt, or whose stock has fallen in the past 18 months -- in most cases directly due to Donald:

Winners:
-John Kasich
-Ben Carson
-the Alt-Right, Paleocons, white supremacists, Alex Jones I would bet
-Probably Mike Pence, although we'll see

Light damage/threat of damage:
-Scott Walker
-Lindsay Graham
-Rand Paul
-Rick Perry
-GOP House control
- Melania humiliated

Serious damage/threat of damage:
-George W Bush's reputation
-Marco Rubio
-Ted Cruz (I would have said he was a winner up until he endorsed, though)
-Conservative desire for foreign intervention
-GOP Senate Control
-Conservative Supreme Court Control
-Chris Christie
-Rick Perry
-Mike Huckabee
-National Review and other conservative thought leaders
-GOP elites/the RNC
-Fox News
-Roger Ailes
-Trump's children (businesses and image hurt)
-Trump himself (who knows what will shake out in terms of business damage and investigations due to his higher profile)

Total destruction
-Jeb and the $120 million he came with
-Bobby Jindal
-Rick Santorum (because rendered obsolete by Carson)
-Carly Fiorina
-Glen Beck, apparently
-Conservative mythology around the Iraq War
-GOP outreach to minorities and women
-The idea that racism in the GOP base can be ignored as a major engine for mobilization
-Reince Priebus
 
R

Randolph Freelander

Member
The Atlantic said:
Donald Trump, on the other hand, has no record of public service and no qualifications for public office. His affect is that of an infomercial huckster; he traffics in conspiracy theories and racist invective; he is appallingly sexist; he is erratic, secretive, and xenophobic; he expresses admiration for authoritarian rulers, and evinces authoritarian tendencies himself. He is easily goaded, a poor quality for someone seeking control of America’s nuclear arsenal. He is an enemy of fact-based discourse; he is ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution; he appears not to read.
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But other than that, he's a swell guy, I guess.
 
A

Anno

Member
John Boehner has to feel like a pretty big winner in all of this. Smiling on a beach somewhere giggling at Paul Ryan.
 
H

HylianTom

Banned
Ecotic said:
Trump will be a net benefit if he loses badly and is a drag down ballot. An argument could be made that he single-handedly gifted an easy victory to Democrats when the race should have been close. I hate the damage he's done this year, but a flipped Supreme Court will last a long time. Hillary's victory this year will change the Obama Presidency into the Obama era. Trump is a very useful idiot.
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This was my calculation when I so desperately wanted him to win nomination.

The sentiment he's dredged-up on the right should not be new or surprising. These folks are emboldened by his nomination, but the damage that a low-key Trump-lite politician (i.e. >90% policy overlap) would do by naming court appointees would do over the next few decades would be greater than this tone of open nastiness followed by an era where a liberal judiciary smacks-down anything too egregious that these folks manage to get through their respective states or the federal Congress.
 
Z

Zukkoyaki

Member
Anno said:
John Boehner has to feel like a pretty big winner in all of this. Smiling on a beach somewhere giggling at Paul Ryan.
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Oh Boehner.

I didn't like him at all and disagreed with him on pretty much everything but at least we could count on him to do what was right for everyone when it really mattered. Deep down he was an American first and a republican second.
 
H

Hopfrog

Member
Kind of tangential, but I am very excited because my fiance and I have tickets to go see Hamilton here in Chicago.

She doesn't know the political history that well, so I am sure I will have to explain a lot of the context post-show.

Edit: Oops, first post on a new page - didn't mean to derail anything.
 
M

Manmademan

Member
PBY said:
I need to read more, but "terrible" seems like waaaay too hard/definitive for these schools (given what I've read on them in the past, despite their many issues)

This issue is somewhat like the issue of gentrification for me, I can see reasonable positions on both sides.
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There is no "reasonable position" for the charter operations, at least not as they stand in this state (which, since I'm from here is where most of my data comes from.)

Those things are quite literally driving the public school system into bankruptcy and making public education WORSE, for no real gain in the quality of education overall.

"Rising charter school enrollments have been a drag on the district’s finances, as state law mandates that public school districts pay the costs of sending students to charter schools. Driven largely by charter school tuition costs, the district’s costs per pupil have increased 70% since 2004. Further enrollment declines would exacerbate the district’s financial pressure as charter schools capture a larger share of the district’s expenditures," Moody's adds.
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http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/inq-phillydeals/Moodys-Philadelphia-School-District-.html

This is a horrific scenario. "terrible" doesn't begin to cover how bad the charter school situation actually is. Philadelphia is in dire straits because of them, and Chester is already well in the process of complete collapse.

to be as transparent as possible, some people suggest comparing philadelphia charters only to philadelphia public schools, since comparing them to ALL schools statewide "isn't fair." in the interest of heading that argument off, I'll address it:

The average SPP score among all Philadelphia charters for 2013-14 is 64.1– dipping slightly from last year's average SPP of 66.

(The district's 214 schools have an average SPP score of 56.8 – again dipping slightly from last year's average SPP of 57.5.)
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http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/...r-schools-stack-up-on-pas-performance-measure

So...if we look at philly only charters vs. public, there's a difference here on the SPP (the state standarized tests). less than 10 points, and both are below 70 (the state minimum) but it's there. Does that mean that Charters are overperforming the public school system? absolutely not. Again, we get into the self selection argument:

The handful of "elite" private schools that exist within the system (say, Mastery) are SIGNIFICANTLY whiter and wealthier than district schools as a whole.

The biggest difference between the “horrendous” public school and its charter alternative isn’t the teachers or the curriculum, it’s the student body. ”Elite” charters, like MaST, tend to have student bodies that are significantly more white and much less likely to be enrolled in free lunch than neighborhood schools such as Disston-Hamilton.
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MaST is 73% White, 7% black, and 7% hispanic in a city where the black/white mix is about 45/45. Economically only 37% of the MaST student body is economically distressed and on the free lunch program, while nearby Disston-Hamilton has 100% of the student body in that category. Wealthier parents that are prone to do better regardless are removing themselves from the public school system and packing themselves into charters. This is not a good thing, since among other issues it promotes segregation- which is a substantial problem that has been noticed among Mississippi's charter schools.

But wait! there's more!

We also need to consider English Language Learners and Special Ed students. Every study shows that charter schools in general have fewer Special Ed students and fewer non-native speakers than District schools. In the CREDO study, 11 percent of charter students were in Special Ed, compared to 13 percent in District schools. The difference among ELL students was even greater: 3 percent in charters, compared to 7 percent in District schools. This matters. Special Ed and ELL take more resources, more teachers, more hours—something, ironically, that charter schools often have more of than traditional publics. Again, though, this is not the whole story. Even among District schools the number of ELL students greatly varies. Like some charters, magnet schools and schools in neighborhoods with few immigrants have no ELL students to speak of. Around 20 schools in immigrant-heavy communities, on the other hand, have a huge percentage of ELL students. As for Special Ed: “No public school can say that we don’t serve these kinds of kids,” says David Lapp, staff attorney at the Education Law Center. But Lapp says parents don’t always know that, and that he often gets calls from parents who have been turned away from a charter because their children have complex needs. “That’s illegal,” he says.
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Charters are accepting significantly less special needs and ELL students, and simply letting the school system have them. And those students eat more resources, teachers, and hours.

but wait, there's more!

Some charters stack the decks by refusing to “backfill.” Kevin McCorry at Newsworks did a phenomenal job laying out the details of this earlier this month. Unlike District schools, which have to take any child from the neighborhood at any time, many charters have a policy of not replacing students who have left for any reason. McCorry uses the example of Freire Charter School, where the graduating class was half the size of the incoming 9th grade class four years earlier. The ones who left? Probably students who couldn’t handle the tough curriculum—and boys, lots of boys. This allows those charters the ability to maintain a culture that is honed on day one of school, part of what is valuable about successful charters—but also gives them a clear advantage. (As McCorry notes, some of the most successful charters—notably KIPP, Mastery and Young Scholars—fill seats as they are emptied.) District schools have to accept kids throughout the year, even if they walk in the door in April (right before testing), and some see a 50 percent turnover throughout the year. Inevitably, this makes educating them (and their classmates) more difficult. As part of its deal with the new five charters it approved in February, the SRC mandated that they have to backfill, and some—including Freire— have started to do that on their own. Superintendent Hite has also called for charters to track their students, so the District can get a clearer picture of who is at the school, something Public Citizens for Children and Youth and others have called for for years.
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Many charters simply don't have to backfill. A student fails out or is removed, and they aren't replaced. This allows charters to concentrate high performing students even further without accepting low performers to drag down the average. Public schools on the other hand are legally required to accept all applicants no matter when they show up in the school year or how bad their performance is.

Most of the time, the students that we start off with in ninth grade with us in September, they're usually fine. That's usually not the problem," said South Philadelphia High School principal Otis Hackney. "The most disruptive part is really getting new students throughout the year."

Hackney says his school enrolls new students almost daily. Some return from the district's alternative placement schools; some have had chronic truancy issues; many, he says, have been "coached" out of charter schools.

"And that's a real experience. We do keep track of where students come from," he said. "They don't always come with the most stellar grades or the behavioral disposition that you would want, but we work hard to make sure they understand quickly what they need to do here."

Hackney says his team does well with limited resources, but the constant influx of new, often more-challenged students, makes progress more difficult.

"Even if you have a school with a strong culture, new people coming in, they have to learn what the expectations are," said Hackney. "You have to constantly remind them: This is how we do things here in South Philadelphia High School. This is how we handle crisis. This is how we handle conflict."
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http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/...ing-public-schools-on-an-uneven-playing-field

There is absolutely no reason for these things to exist, given the costs to the rest of the district. They aren't improving education, they're segregating high performers into a handful of schools and spiking costs astronomically.
 
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