Posted on 01/22/2004 7:07:09 AM PST by Wolfstar
Einstein supported socialism. I'm not sure that's something I'd want to aspire to.
The only rationale you laid out for me for voting for Bush, as implied in your initial derisive rant, is that otherwise, I would be helping the Democrat. There are good things about Bush: he's fighting terrorism abroad, he freed Iraq, and he cut taxes. However, he also signed campaign finance reform, the so-called PATRIOT act, and an expensive additional medicare entitlement. The deficit for this fiscal year alone is projected to be 500 billion dollars.
You call me unappaeasable. At this point in time, you might say I'm guilty as charged. However, I'm not completely so. If Bush would renounce his repressive, big-spending ways and take some concrete steps to correct them, I could see voting for him again this November. However, until then, I refuse to carry water for him, and I certainly refuse to roll over for narrow-minded Republi-bigots like you.
Well ,Churchill did once, too. Ah well. Well, seriously, what do you aspire to? You make a strong stand and work hard to do it, so I'd say whatever you want to do.
Hardly sounds like a socialist viewpoint to me.
But, I guess if people can quibble about the meaning of Is, they can sure parse the meaning of freedom too.
But, the reality is a third party candidate WILL NOT win.
So, the practical outcome boils down to Bush or a Democrat (Kerry/Dean/Edwards/Clark). Even with his major faux pas, choosing between Bush and any of the others is an easy decision for me.
Supporting any other candidate's victory over Bush might lead to the classic Pyrrhic Victory, a battle so costly, that it wasn't worth winning.
He's not my ideal candidate - but, unless something drastic changes between now and November - I'll vote for Bush.
But we have seen Jose Padilla. Even though he probably is a dangerous terrorist, he is a U.S. citizen and it was wrong to hold him for two years until letting him finally see an attorney recently, and still no charges.
And, the scary part, in this day and age, we just DON'T KNOW what the government is doing to analyze us and our behaviors, the volumes of data they are collecting on us using those massive computers they have.
And the scariest part of all, is to make this law permanent -- can you imagine how it would be in the hands of somebody like Hillary (800 FBI files, WH travel office and Craig Livingstone) and Janet Reno (Waco, Elian, etc.).
In fact, we don't know what Dubya will do with it after he doesn't have to run for reelection ??
Who would've ever thought he would sign CFR ??
We don't need no stinkin' Patriot Act - this country got along fine without it for more than 200 years. In my view, the Constitution gives our government all the tools it needs to fight terrorism, at home and abroad.
I'll accept that.The Patriot Act came into being because the Peepul, with whipping from the Dems and the Media, demanded to be "safe" and so it goes...
Your fears about Hillary! are well founded and something I considered when the Act was proposed. .CFR was a political calculation gone wrong,nothing more, nothing less.
Are you saying that the Federal Government is not responsible for national standards or that a majority of conservatives are experts on the bill. The supreme court has already established through many rulings that the federal government, under the commerce clause, is responsible for setting national standards, thus the national standards on weights, measures, time, etc. The only question then becomes whether there should be a national standard that a high school diploma should meet. The conservatives I have contact with don't argue against it. I would entertain arguments though.
An interesting side note, the Va. House of Delegates, which is quite conservative and completely dominated by Republicans, just voted 99-1 to ask Congress to exempt the state from No Child Left Behind. The conservatives in the HOD said the act "represents the most sweeping intrusions into state and local control of education in the history of the United States" and will cost "millions of dollars that Virginia does not have." They say the federal plan is also undermining Virginia's own Standards of Learning, which educators and politicians alike say are among the toughest in the U.S.
Very sweeping statements, very light on details. Details please? What does the bill contain that is counter to what Virginia is trying to do in the first place?
The article says one of the "hoops" is "adequate yearly progress." Even some of the state's top schools can be judged to not be making adequate yearly progress simply because their standards were so high to begin with. If you don't make adequate yearly progress then you might have to pay to send a child to a school that has. The problem with this is that in some rural areas the next closest school is more than an hour away (in really rural states it can be hours and hours away) and THAT school might not have made adequate progress either.
So, are you saying you think the bill says that a school that is meeting the standards could be held at fault for not making adequate yearly progress toward the standards? Doesn't make sense.
You follow that by saying that parents would force school systems to send their children to a school hours away when that school is no better or worse than their current school. Exactly why would the parents want to subject their children to the hours of travel for no apparent gain?
And in some urban areas the closest schools that have made the progress are already horribly overcrowded. So do you send in a pile of new students, which would almost certainly damage the education of the kids already there?
I will admit to not being a lawyer, only having had business law classes, I won't swear to knowing the complete legal ramification bills, but no one has shown me anything in the bill which under closer examination required schools to accept students which they were not capable of handling.
Another problem is that No Child Left Behind expects ALL children, even ones who are severely learning disabled, to meet the same standards. As a teacher, I'm sure your wife can tell you that is not logical, nor is it possible.
Actually my wife teaches reading enrichment and Dyslexia students. She believes that the most striking progress didn't take place until after the exemptions for learning disabilities were removed. Until then, schools used the exemptions to hide behind. Now the delivery of the test is modified to address the disability, but all students are tested and all students are part of the final result. She literally cursed about the stupidity of it before hand and loves it after seeing it implemented. School administrators hate it, but schools aren't supposed to be about making the administrators happy, are they?
I don't pretend to be happy with the total dollar figures associated with the bill. Unfortunately, I think those dollar figures or more would be present under any administration given the current political climate. So, I look past the dollars to the other elements of the bill. Those I believe set the framework for accountability so that in the years to come we will at least have accountability for the dollars being spent. When there is accountability, improvement is possible. Without accountability, no improvement will take place.
As you know, to graduate HS, students must pass a comprehensive Standards of Learning (SOL) test.
And under the No Child Left Behind Act -- schools also are "graded."
The bill proposed suggests that a student attending a "failed" school, who also fails his/her SOL test, be given a diploma anyway.
Now, isn't that the limit of irony (stupidity) -- the state (commonwealth) sends a kid to a failing school, doesn't teach him adequately to pass the SOL, and then they send out the door into a cruel world with a diploma that is meaningless.
Maybe, instead they ought to use these metrics to identify a kid who has been shortchanged and needs remedial education, until he can pass the SOL, and then send him into the world with a credential that truly means he really can read, write and cipher at some minimal level.
That's wrong. There is a separate clause in the Constitution specifically empowering Congress to establish a system of weights and measures. It was therefore not intended to be comprehended under the commerce clause. And, there is absolutely no comparison between setting a legal standard for weight, and requiring schools to perform in a certain manner. Likewise, no one can legitimately claim that education is "commerce". See United States vs. Lopez.
If the federal government was empowered ONLY to establish reasonable standards for national accreditation, it might not be so bad.
Unfortunately, creeping socialism and slippery slopes lead to more than "standards."
Pretty soon the Feds want to establish curricula, and then tell the states how to teach it.
We don't need the feds telling states how to suck eggs on education.
If a state can't (or won't) teach its kids (Arkansas, Mississippi, West Virginia, et al) -- don't live there, let 'em suffer economically, eventually the people will demand they amend their ways.
There's no reason for some taxpayer in Red Lodge, Montana to be paying for public schools in Charleston, West Virginia (To the chagrin of Sen Wrong !! Robert Byrd.
Sort of a tough love program for states and their citizens.
The 10th Amendment establishes more than States Rights, it implies duties and responsibilities for the states as well.
Better yet, they might just fire the state from the job and start educating their kids themselves. That's the outcome I've got my fingers crossed for.
”So you think George W. Bush is not a conservative?”
Yes, I think George W. Bush is not a conservative.
But, I’m going for him anyway, because he is not as liberal as any of potential Democrat nominees. And, a third party candidate has no chance of winning the election.
I reserve the right to change my mind.
2,000 is enough - let's let this thread die.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.