Bush, you're not at a frat party, you dick

[Scylla]

@Oy!

OK, I’ll give this a try. It’s only 90 today, and surprisingly, that’s made an enormous difference in my comfort level, enough so that I will endeavor to continue my enjoyable argument with Scylla.

My well casing collapsed on Friday, so we lost all water and A/C. ZZTop showed up in an oil Derrick to drill me a new hole, but went down 100 ft and hit 60 ft. of air. Apparently, I live over the batcave. I shut off the inflow at the well-head, bought Walmart’s stock of hose, and a repair coupling and hooked into my neighbors garden hose a third of a mile away so I could flush the toilet.

Hence, my delay.

OK, this was NOT my understanding (about vouchers being provided only where schools weren’t meeting certain criteria - in fact, that’s the absolute first I’ve ever heard that idea), and I don’t know off-hand which of us is correct, but we’ll assume it’s you for the moment.

Why assume?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/07/18/school.vouchers.ap/index.html

Under the new legislation, the vouchers would mainly go to students in poor schools that have failed to meet their progress goals for at least five straight years.

Parents could get $4,000 per year to put toward private-school tuition or a public school outside their local district. They could also seek up to $3,000 per year for extra tutoring.]/quote]

It is surprising to me, that you would indict this proposal, and Republicans based on it, and yet not be familiar with it. Vouchers only going to schools that fail to meet performance has been the key component of this proposal.

If so, then yes, it’s a decent thing for the people, but it pretty much destroys any hopes of bringing those public schools up to snuff.

Maybe. It seems to me that if they fail to educate they are by definition a waste of taxpayer money. I see no cause to lament the closing of a school that isn’t educating children but merely squandering the irreplaceable time of educable youth and leaving them at a severe disadvantage. It sounds to me, like a good thing.

The other thing you have to understand, and I seriously doubt that you do, because it’s pretty evident that you made a tidy little bundle on Wall Street and then retired to a farm in PA, is that tax breaks are virtually useless to the extremely poor.

I understand that tax breaks primarily benefit those paying subject to the tax getting a break. This is not a tax-break. This would be a voucher for education expenses. Seeing as the government is failing its part of the social contract, and wasting the money it was supposed to be using to educate a given child, it seems completely right and proper that somebody else be given a shot to do that job properly. Education is a very personal business, and I think putting the decision in the hands of the family, offering them more choice and freedom so that we can make good on our commitments is an excellent thing. I really have a problem with the idea that this is somehow bad, that we should force the families of the poor to keep their children in schools that fail to educate.

I don’t understand how you think this benefits the wealthy, nor how you consider it a tax-break.

I’m not quite certain how the voucher system is supposed to work - if it means that people can apply for a coupon that would actually cover the tuition on a local private school, then yes, it would be useful to a poor family.

No offense meant here, Oy. You’re a gentleman and it’s a pleasure speaking with you, but how exactly do you see fit to judge this program without having looked into what is actually proposed.

Like with Republicans in general, I think you need to understand before you judge.

But a really poor family is NEVER going to have the money to pay for a private school, even the Catholic ones, which admittedly are less expensive than other private schools and certainly better quality than the local public schools in my area at least.

$4,000 per year will cover tuition and quite a few private schools. Even if that’s not an option the $3,000 for tutoring needy children who are not getting the education the government promises to deliver is hardly objectionable. Instead of funnelling more money into a problem, it’ll be going to a solution which will help those kids now.

Lots of non-Catholic lower middle class families do in fact send their kids to Catholic school here in Trenton, and I don’t blame them one bit. I imagine that a break from paying school taxes for them would be very welcome. But it makes the possibility that Trenton public schools can ever hope to improve almost nil, because they will have even less funding than they do now.

There is no component of a tax break from school taxes in the voucher program.

I’m jumping ahead to some of the points you made later in your post here, but you have a very distorted idea of urban areas, at least in the fading industrial North East. You think they have plenty of funding? Think again. This city is mostly poor, dirt poor. There are very few wealthy folks in Trenton, and I would imagine that Trenton is fairly typical of a city of its size in this general geographical area.

Lived as a kid in Bloomfield, West Orange, Montclair. I know Trenton, Newark, Jersey City, Hoboken. These are my old stomping grounds.

The communities and the people in some of the places you name may not be particularly wealthy, but that’s ok, school-tax wise since school taxes are derived from the value of the property in terms of real estate taxes. The land is valued higher than most places.

My final year in New Jersey, which was 1992, I personally payed about $13,000 in school taxes. My house was nothing special. The school tax base in New Jersey is more than sufficient to provide eductation to the children of New Jersey if it used wisely. More than sufficient.

If you like, we can try to find the info online and look at it, but it’s quite shocking just how much they waste.

Actually, it’s probably a bit better off than most, because at least it is the state capitol, providing a fairly decent job base. Of course, the pay from the state is beans, but it’s a lot better than no job at all, and the benefits, although not what they once were, are pretty good, at least comparable to a GOOD corporation (and better than a bad one). But the majority of people around here who work at all work at hourly jobs with no benefits, no sick time, no vacation, etc. And a lot of people in this area can’t find work at all.

Why should their children also suffer? Shouldn’t those children have a chance at the decent education our tax dollars are supposed to guarrantee?

You have it firmly embedded in your mind as an article of as deep faith as the Pope (hopefully) has in God that anything run by the government is automatically far less efficient than anything done by a corporation.

No. I don’t think that. The corporation is not my God. The Government is necessary, but it’s a sledgehammer solution to most problems.

You also have the idea that government employees, believing themselves to be firmly set in their jobs for life, saunter through their jobs doing a little work when they find it amusing to do so.

No I don’t. I don’t beleive I commented on Government workers, I believe I commented on government organizations which are huge wasteful, self-perpetuating, self-protective entities, like all bureacracies.

I can’t convince you otherwise, because nothing I tell you is going to permeate that belief. The fact is that people are people everywhere; some are going to work incredibly hard, some are going to slide through on the minimum they can get away with.

You don’t need to convince me, I know it.

You were, I gather, a stock broker, which is a very high-profile job where not exceeding the already extremely high expectations they have of you is pretty much grounds for firing.

I used to be a bond trader with a wirehouse.

[quote]

The majority of teachers, oddly enough, DO identify with their schools and want desperately for them to succeed, especially the ones in the poorest areas where the teachers tend to be rather idealistic or altruistic.

Which to me is moot. I just want them to be good teachers in good schools. Otherwise, I don’t think that the children of the needy should be forced to go there to get a noneducation.

The reason the kids generally do better in the Catholic schools is first and foremost because their parents are the kind of people who send them to a Catholic school!

My father went. His father died in WWII. The Archdioces of New York ate the bulk of the tuition. The Catholic school my daughter attends bills on a sliding scale based on ability to pay. Everybody at least pays a token fee. Those on the higher end of the income scale pay full tuition (minus the discount for being part of the flock.) The children of the very poor do attend. Basically, if you want your kid to go there and are committed to that, they’ll make it happen for you.

It was like that in New Jersey when I went, and in every Catholic School I heard of.

The reason I think children do well there is not because they are sent, but because the families and children are committed to it, involved, and, because the schools are serious about discipline, and makes sure the parents are serious about it too.

[Scylla]

You say that it’s not the kid’s responsibility, but I say bullshit. It IS the kid’s responsibility to try to do well in school, and in families that care about their kids’ education, this is so automatic that you don’t even recognize it. The inner city schools not only get the poorest of the poor, they get the most indifferent of the indifferent; children who not only have never really known someone personally who did well because of education, but whose parents have never known someone like that either.

You make an excellent point. How do we educate indifferent children who’s parents are also indifferent? I don’t know. We can hope. We can hope for good teachers who can captivate a child’s attention. We can hope for parents to open up their eyes. I **do[/] though that forcing both the unmotivated and the motivated to go to a school that isn’t educating doesn’t help with the problem. At least this way we are giving those that want the education the opportunity to get it.

If a good education isn’t even available, the question of motivation versus indifference is pretty much moot.

Note here that when I’m talking about really poor people, I’m NOT talking about the college grad who has chosen a very low paying field because that’s what they really want to do. I’m talking about the multi-generational poor, the ones who have virtually NO exposure to anything but the lives they and their immediate peers live. And here, societal trends in the past fifty years have been distinctly unfortunate. Probably when Ronald Reagan was a young man, it was truly possible for a dirt poor kid to work his way up to the top. Education was still viewed pretty universally with respect, and children were expected to try to do as well as they could. Things have changed a lot. There are plenty of people living in the ghettos who flash cars, clothes, and jewelry that cost far more than I would ever consider paying for those things, and I make a pretty decent living. How? Drugs, mostly. Thanks almost solely to their illegality, there is a fortune to be made in the distribution of drugs, and plenty of kids who recognize that this is a comparatively easy way of getting ready cash. Sure, there’s risk and illegality involved, but what kid truly thinks about risk, and many of these kids simply are indifferent to legality. After all, what has the ‘system’ ever done for them?

Actually drug dealing organizations make corporations look egalitarian. In Freakonomics Steven Levitt has a chapter called “Why do Drug Dealers still live with their Moms?” which goes into how they work and who makes money from them. The point being that as it turns out the drug dealers really aren’t making good money are. A very few at the very top are. The rest aren’t. They do not actually have wealth, but they display wealth. It’s a good read, and Levitt got pretty deep into some inner city drug gangs to get his information.

Their parents are different too. I’m guessing you’re about five-ten years younger than I (I’m just 50), and I’m the youngest of some widely spread children, so my parents grew up during the depression. My mom lives, and lives fairly comfortably, on $15-$20 K a year. Part of that is due to a subsidized senior apartment complex, but most of it is that she knows how to use (and not use) her money. Still, that social security that you so scorn is what keeps my mother eating, and this despite the fact that she worked full time almost her entire life. Sure, she MIGHT have done better investing that extra paycheck money it in the market herself. Just as likely, she would have lost it entirely. And then what?

Beleive it or not, your mother is the success story of SS. It’s who it was designed to help. It was clear that after the great depression when so many were wiped out that poverty in old age was going to be a major issue for that generation. That’s why the early buy-in was so small. Chances are for your mother that she got a lot more than she put in, so, for her, and some others, it was great.

Personally, I don’t think that we should let people suffer and die when they can’t work or help themselves. I think we should help those that can’t help themselves. Ideally, wouldn’t it be nice if the government was taking less of your money so you could support your Mom? Filtering your cash through the government means that some of it gets used up before it goes to your Mom. Couldn’t you take care of her?

Assuming, you are not there, willing or able to take care of your Mom, and nobody else was willing than I think she should get public assistance. But be aware, that same check that goes to your Mom, also goes to some retired multi-millionaire in Boca Raton, who’s the same age as your mother. If the idea of SS security is to create a safety net against need, than why isn’t it needs based? Why do we send checks to multi-millionaires?

If we weren’t we could be sending a bigger check to more poor people, couldn’t we?

Therein lies the problem. SS is often argued from the needs perspective. It is however, not a needs-based program. It is designed as a pseudo-pension. It fails miserably as a pension. It fails as a needs-based program.

Why not do away with this failed program, or modify it, so that it actually performs functions that are useful today, and does so efficiently?

But I digress. Today’s kids’ parents among the very poor don’t know how to stretch a penny six different ways. They don’t even know that they SHOULD.

I would submit that part of the reason that they don’t know how is because the government has taken on the responsibility of doing it for them. It fails. It cannot help but fail in this. It will always fail in this. The government cannot provide for the people. The government is parasitic (or at best symbiotic,) on the people. It can’t give them anything any more than a tick in a dog’s ear can feed that dog.

The idea that the government can and should take care of you is a lie.

They just know that occasionally they have a surplus, which generally goes to buying something obscenely expensive for their kids that “all the other kids have,” and usually they have less than they need to meet this month’s bills.

Perhaps if those parents had gone to schools that taught them they would know better. Why send their children through the same failed process. Why not give those children an alternative?

Tax benefits are almost useless to them, because they pay almost nothing in taxes as it is.

I agree, but vouchers aren’t tax breaks.

What they WANT is a large sum of money to let them catch up, and which will (in their minds) then allow them to keep up in the future. What they NEED is a complete culture change, so that they are more like my parents were. I don’t know how to do that. Do you?

I do. I know a couple of ways. Some of them are so ugly and scary they are truly beyond consideration by a compassionate person. Most of the compassionate ones don’t work? I do have some ideas, that fall in the middle. I think you have to make opportunity available. Education has to be available.

If society makes those things available, it really has fulfilled its obligation. We can’t force people to do well for themselves or do the right thing. We can only make it possible. We can only give them the choice.

If the opportunity is there, some people will take it. Those that do, those that succeed become an example.

So vouchers? If they aren’t going to be subsidizing Mr. and Mrs. Ultrarich Ashton-Clarke the Third’s little Muffie going to the most pretigious private kindergarten in the area instead of the perfectly adequate public school down the street, they’re a nice little benefit for the middle class.

This doesn’t follow from anything you’ve said, and really only shows that you’re not familiar with the substance of the proposal.

There are some real reservations as to whether the program will actually work. You haven’t hit on those, but instead, appear, out of ignorance of the actual proposal to assume that it targets the wealthy or middle class for its benefits. It does not.

But one that will be highly damaging to the public schools, which whether you can accept it or not, are ALL struggling financially, and NOT because Mr. Lazy-ass Do-nothing Superintendent gets 3 months a year paid vacation. Do you actually KNOW any teachers? I do. Very few of them get summers off, and their day sure as hell doesn’t end at 3, even though some of the kids go home then.

I know teachers. What public schools are in session during the summer?

I again, challenge you to examine the budget for the school district of your choice. Start with the school tax base and see how much that works out to per student in the district covered by that base. Show me that number so I can see it, and then we can discuss whether it’s enough.

My read on the one I’ve seen (which is my local one,) it’s fucking humongous. The problem is that it doesn’t get to the kids.

But under-funding isn’t the worst of the problems with the inner cities schools. It’s just a bad one that vouchers would make even worse. The worst problem is the environment and the culture in which they’re trying to educate students.

I agree, but some kids are motivated. Some parents do value education. We’re failing them by not providing opportunity. We have to provide the opportunity to them that wants it.

And it’s not the kids’ fault either, or even their parents’, or rather, it is, but it’s understandable. They come from a culture that sees no value in education, and that mocks those who try to get one. Very few kids are going to push themselves to try in that situation, and their parents are mostly either too indifferent or too damned busy (with hourly jobs, it’s probably going to take two or even three a day to support a family) to be able to provide the necessary support.

I agree with you. I agree with a lot of what you’ve said. I don’t think School vouchers solve anything. They do, however, seem to help make things better for those that value education. That’s a step in the right direction, and I endorse the idea for that reason.

OK, I’m out of steam now. I’ll continue this tomorrow. I’m sorry, Scylla but it’s the best I can do for now. Better than yesterday or not, it’s still 90 degrees.

Fondly,
Oy!

Oy:

I don’t think you showed a lot of knowledge about vouchers, and I don’t think a lot of what you wrote was pertinent to the actual discussion at hand.

I think that’s ok, because you’ve hit the crux of a much larger much more important issue. I am talking about the mechanics of school’s failing, you are talking about why they are failing. Ultimately, yours is the more meaningful perspective. When you take on that perspective and delve into causes I see nothing to disagree with, and I think you’ve done an incredibly good job of portraying it.

It’s a very sad thing, because I don’t have any answers (actually, I do, but they are ugly answers that shame me,) any more than you do.

Vouchers though seem to offer the possibility for those looking for an education and who value it to have the chance of getting it. In that, I think it’s a positive. I don’t think it’s a selfish program. It’s not a tax-break. It may not even work. I’m not prescient. It is however, a legitimate attempt to make things a little bit better and that’s what you tasked me to find.
I think, if you try to look at things from the perspective of a conservative, you might learn some useful things. I don’t mean the perspective of the conservative that you have in your head (which is kind of a caricature.) Sadly, the caricature of the money grubbing selfish Republican is not a fiction. They exist, lots of them. But, if you look at us at our best, and look for our best, and look at the best we have to offer, you may find some respect for our viewpoints. You may question some of your ideas and strengthen some of your others.

We are largely, like liberals, very good people with some good ideas and some bad ones.

I think hanging out here has made me a better conservative. I get some of the smart people and people with different perspectives who disagree with me, and see the holes in my own viewpoints.

I see the hole in my viewpoint vis-a-vis vouchers, the one you are pointing too. You are saying that the program will help some, but just the needy who value education and that it will be throwing those that don’t to the wolves, that it will be making things even worse for those who don’t. You are saying that it does nothing to change the cultural problem, the larger reason why education is failing.

If, in good faith, I could disagree with you and find fault in those assertions, I would be a pretty happy guy about it. I can’t.

I think you’re right. It doesn’t solve the cultural problem, and it will probably make things worse for those who culturally don’t value education.

I think net of net, it’s a good idea. You have to start by saving those who want to be saved, by helping the people that want to be helped. You don’t stop there, but that’s where you start.

[Oy]

Scylla, dear, thank you for referring to me as a gentleman. It’s a high compliment except for the fact that I’m female. Also, I’m sorry about your well problems, although it must be cool living above the Bat Cave. Does it come with all the cool electronics equipment, and its own butler (and if so, could you please send me the butler - you can keep the equipment!)?

I could go into detail, but when it comes down to well-meaning conservatives like you (except when you’re apologizing for Bush, then you gotta admit you’re stretching it a little sometimes - e.g. wasn’t there something about two-three years ago about admitting he was lying if there were no WMDs found in Iraq by a certain date now long past?), you’re right - the difference is that you’re willing to help those who are trying to help themselves, and throw the rest to the wolves, and I’m trying to help the rest, and maybe not give as much to the self-helpers. (Actually, I’d love to help the self-helpers just as much or more, and I’m not the one who votes for any dick who says the words “tax relief.”) There’s also this deep-seated and in my view misguided conviction that any government action will be hugely wasteful and poorly done (which I argue is no more true of the government than it is of any decent sized corporation, and at least in the government’s case they’re not TRYING to rob the public of every penny they can as their raison d’etre), but let’s put that part away for now. I absolutely can’t change your mind on that part - that’s the article of faith I was talking about.

You know, if it were only adults suffering the consequences of their decisions, I’d be with you 100%. Throw 'em to the wolves if they make enough bad decisions. They knew what they were doing when they took the job, so to speak.

But it’s not just the consequences of adult decisions, and you know it as well as I do. It’s not even just that their children won’t get it right. That’s almost a given, and Lord knows how many generations THAT will go on - talk about visiting the sins of the fathers unto the children! We’re talking generation upon generation here. (And I have an idea of the kinds of solutions you won’t actually voice - I’ve read my Heinlein and loved him for years. But we can’t. We just can’t.)

But also, the fact is, you can make decisions that will totally fuck up your life when you’re just a kid yourself. The top one, of course, is a girls-only one: having a baby. And today’s society not only discourages (to put it mildly) abortion (which I can understand objecting to on religious or moral grounds, even though I disagree), but STRONGLY encourages the teenager to keep and raise the child herself. As if the nine-month pregnancy alone wasn’t enough to completely disrupt the kid’s chance of going the route that will land them in a comfortable living situation! And, unfortunately, this trend started earliest and has the strongest hold among the very stratum of society that can afford it the least and has the problem the most often - the very poor. I remember back in the late seventies or early eighties being rather shocked and horrified by a sit-com on TV (I can’t remember the name of the program, but it was a predominantly black show with, I think, Nell Carter as one of the leads) where one of the characters got pregnant and planned initially to give the child up for adoption. By the end of the episode, she made the decision to keep and raise the child herself, and the studio audience burst into applause. I was stunned. No, money can’t guarantee a good or happy childhood, but then neither can living with a broke teen-aged bio mother who now has precious little chance of ever going to college or breaking out of poverty. I know on which one I’d place my money for that baby, though!

You can say that a girl made a bad decision when she decided to have sex, and that therefore she has to pay the consequences. But again, we’re talking about a KID here. How many years do you have to pay for a bad mistake made a a kid? How many generations have to pay? These are the people you’re willing to throw to the wolves too, not just the guy in his mid-thirties who takes up drinking as a hobby. And maybe you’re right. But I’m not quite willing to give up yet on the kids who make bad decisions or on the descendants of adults who make bad choices. And that’s the big difference in domestic fiscal policy between the liberals and the conservatives.

BTW, just as a last little note, it’s true that public schools usually cost quite a bit more per child than some of the less expensive private schools. You’re assuming that that’s due to their inherent inefficiencies, because schools are Part of the Government, and therefore a Terrible Bureaucracy. But have you considered the fact that public schools don’t have the option of turning a kid down? Or kicking him out? They have to provide EQUAL facilities and programs for every kid, regardless of his disabilities and/or his behavioral problems. They don’t *have * the option of saying “I’m sorry, but we can’t accommodate your child’s needs here. We’re just not set up for it.”
I probably won’t check in again for most of the day, perhaps not until tomorrow, so please consider this yet another drive-by.