[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
Hopefully that’ll improve: the executive responsibilities of running a country are considerably greater than those of running a campaign.
[/QUOTE]
Executives screw up too, so I don’t see why this matters. I’m not impressed by Edwards, and it might be a negative for his campaign, but I don’t see why it should impact anybody’s views of how he might perform as president.
[QUOTE=Renob]
Of course, this NEA message completely ignores the reality of the school choice experiments in Milwaukee, Ohio, Florida and elsewhere. The kids who benefit from school choice are kids in failing public schools that have no other options. These public schools have been failing for decades and yet, until vouchers, parents had no other place to send kids. Liberals, for some reason, want to keep kids held hostage in these schools with the empty promise that they will be improved. The schools don’t improve, however, and the kids continue to receive a crappy education.
[/QUOTE]
Emphasis added, I speak to only Ohio schools. Would these be the same charter schools that have test scores that are no better or even worse than public schools?
Or perhaps you are talking about the charter school that has been mildly successful, but is horribly in debt from mismanagement? http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2007/02/24/20070224-A1-00.html
The kids continue to receive a crappy education for quite a lot of reasons. Perhaps lining the pockets of corporations that run these alternative schools is not helping the problem either?
[QUOTE=howye]
Emphasis added, I speak to only Ohio schools. Would these be the same charter schools that have test scores that are no better or even worse than public schools?
[/quote]
Well, I wasn’t specifically talking about charter schools, but they are certainly part of the school choice debate.
Charter schools in many cases deal with children who are much more disadvantaged than their peers in “regular” schools. To simply compare test scores is a bit misleading.
However, if these charter schools are failing children, then parents can withdraw them and go to another public school or another charter school. In many cases (Ohio being an exception) that is not an option for a child in a school that is failing.
Sure, some charter schools suck. Some are run by charlatans. Guess what? If these schools are bad, then they will lose their funding and be shut down. When was the last time that happened to an equally crappy public school?
Maybe, maybe not. If the parents are happy with these schools, though, then they will continue to operate. If they are not, the schools will shut down. That seems like a pretty good way to judge these schools.
[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink]
I’ve been confused by the whole story. Can somebody please explain what it means to “blog for” a candidate?
[/QUOTE]
“Blog” is short for “web log”. They’re sort of like online diaries. Lately, political campaigns have been hiring people to create blogs about the campaign. They post comments from the campaign trail, campaign schedules, press related to the campaign or candidate and so on. Here are some examples of campaign blogs.
Here’s John Edward’s
Here’s Hillary Clinton’s
Here’s Barack Obama’s
Here’s Sam Brownback’s
I wasn’t able to find official blogs for any of the other candidates.
[QUOTE=spazattak]
Dio hit this already. People in poverty already work.
[/QUOTE]
Well, sort of - just not full time or year round.Figures vary, but most poor families do not have one adult in them who works full-time, year round. Cite.
[/hijack]
Regards,
Shodan
[QUOTE=Renob]
Wealthy people just don’t sit on their money.
[/QUOTE]
Neither does the government. Government spending of taxes collected from Fatty McBigbux fuels the economy just as surely as his investments.
[QUOTE=Renob]
Well, I wasn’t specifically talking about charter schools, but they are certainly part of the school choice debate.
Charter schools in many cases deal with children who are much more disadvantaged than their peers in “regular” schools. To simply compare test scores is a bit misleading.
However, if these charter schools are failing children, then parents can withdraw them and go to another public school or another charter school. In many cases (Ohio being an exception) that is not an option for a child in a school that is failing.
Sure, some charter schools suck. Some are run by charlatans. Guess what? If these schools are bad, then they will lose their funding and be shut down. When was the last time that happened to an equally crappy public school?
Maybe, maybe not. If the parents are happy with these schools, though, then they will continue to operate. If they are not, the schools will shut down. That seems like a pretty good way to judge these schools.
[/QUOTE]
What other school choice are you speaking of? Private schools? Private schools do not have to take any student, they can pick and choose. Private religious schools? Let’s not even go there. Private schools are not the solution.
Test scores are not a fair comparison? But aren’t test scores the holy grail of the conservative movement against education? NCLB is based on test scores. If a charter school can not raise scores, then it is not an improvement over the public school.
Some public schools suck and are run by charlatans. How about we work on fixing problems, and not shifting them around.
[QUOTE=Renob]
Go to his website. He proposes raising taxes on the wealthy and increasing taxes on oil company profits (which I assume is the windfall profits tax). There may be more, but that’s what I found in about two minutes there.
[/quote]
And you’re arguing that the oil companies will have to cut jobs if they are taxed more aggressively on these profits?
Because it is disingenuous. So is your use of “high tax rates” to characterize pre-bush tax rates. And I didn’t say anything about going back that far.. Just pre-bush. Taxes weren’t unreasonable under Clinton. In fact, I recall the economy doing quite well and the government starting to get control of the deficit.
I’m not talking about getting rid of legal corporate tax breaks. They’re a necessary and useful tool to promote progress and adherence to policies. I’m talking about getting rid of corporate welfare (handouts to companies) and illegal tax shelters (there’s a very good frontline you can watch online about this). How stopping handouts and collecting what is legally owed to the government can be seen as a raise in taxes is beyond me.
If this Edwards blog thing is such a big yank, why aren’t we talking about this around the water cooler? I think it’s an issue only to those that put stock in blogs. Most of the rest of us could give a rip.
[QUOTE=spazattak]
Should everyone a campaign hires be vetted for their adherence to societal norms?
[/QUOTE]
In a word, yes.
These days, the other side has scores of researchers working almost 24/7 to dig up dirt on candidates and their staffers.
Having an outspoken athiest – not that there’s anything wrong with that – would be poison to the Edwards camp.
The thing is, I hate, hate, hate lockstep political thinking. One of the major points of suckitude in the Bush White House is that everyone he comes in contact with on a daily basis has the same mindset.
A quality president will have advisors who will **challenge ** him or her on proposed policies, and who perform the role of devil’s advocate so as to ensure that any eventual decision will have been thoroughly discussed and examined for flaws.
But save that stuff for the White House … a campaign can’t have any black sheep, (either real or imagined in the Karl Rovian minds of your opponent).
[QUOTE=howye]
What other school choice are you speaking of? Private schools? Private schools do not have to take any student, they can pick and choose. Private religious schools? Let’s not even go there. Private schools are not the solution.
[/quote]
No, they are not “the solution.” However, they should be part of the solution, if some parents want to send their kids there. If a parent finds that the public school is not meeting his kid’s needs, then why is it so wrong to use a voucher to help that parent send his kid to a private school?
I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with the over-emphasis on test scores. Dissatisfaction with schools may take a variety of forms, such as a child feeling unsafe, the special ed program not being up to snuff, not enough emphasis on certain subjects, etc. It may also be that a school just does a plain old bad job of educating most students. Whatever the reason for dissatisfaction, a parent should have options. If a charter school meets a student’s needs, whatever those needs are, then that school is better than the public school the student left.
Unlike public schools, no one is forced to go to a charter school. If they are so bad, then they will no longer have any students and will be forced to shut down. That is the way it should be for all schools.
Yes, let’s keep all students in these crappy schools and just “fix” the problem. How long have we heard this? These public schools aren’t improving because there is no incentive for them to do so. In Ohio you see some incentive in the fact that a lot of schools are losing students. There are news stories all the time in the Ohio press about this public school or that public school starting to change things in order to keep students. If you want public schools to change, you need to give them an incentive to do so. Before school choice, they had absolutely none.
[QUOTE=Shodan]
Well, sort of - just not full time or year round.Figures vary, but most poor families do not have one adult in them who works full-time, year round. Cite.
[/hijack]
Regards,
Shodan
[/QUOTE]
Let me get this straight. You’re using a site that has this:
to back up your claim that those in poverty don’t necessarily work? Your characterization seems to be a gross abuse of the single-parent family population.
[QUOTE=spazattak]
And you’re arguing that the oil companies will have to cut jobs if they are taxed more aggressively on these profits?
[/quote]
Certainly. When we had a windfall profits tax, we saw energy companies cut back their investment in the U.S.
Fine, “higher tax rates.” Regardless, returning to them would be a tax increase.
This has nothing to do with the tax code; that relates to government spending.
Who’s arguing in favor of illegal tax shelters? Edwards wants to raise corporate taxes (at least on oil companies). It has nothing to do with ending illegal tax shelters.
Because that’s not what I’m talking about. I was talking about Edwards support of increasing taxes on corporations, and you bring up the unrelated issue of corporate welfare (a spending issue) and illegal tax shelters (an enforcement issue). Don’t confuse the issues. If you are talking about tax rates, talk about tax rates, not government spending or IRS enforcement issues.
[QUOTE=Mr. Moto]
Hiring people with that much baggage would be a problem for any candidate.
Let’s not forget, this country is still overwhelming Christian. And Marcotte wasn’t someone who was just an atheist, or intellectually critical of religion. She was profane and disparaging toward believers and their beliefs.
That’s the sort of thing no candidate can get too close to. It’s way too hot.
[/QUOTE]
I know. And in the other thread, along those lines, you said:
I didn’t have to think about it, because the Strategic Vision polling firm was kind enough to come up with some numbers. Here’s their polling of Iowa, with post-Marcotte/McEwan numbers (Feb. 16-18) first, followed by the ‘before’ numbers:
This scandal has clearly sunk Edwards in Iowa. He’s dead meat.
[QUOTE=Spiff]
The thing is, I hate, hate, hate lockstep political thinking. One of the major points of suckitude in the Bush White House is that everyone he comes in contact with on a daily basis has the same mindset.
A quality president will have advisors who will **challenge ** him or her on proposed policies, and who perform the role of devil’s advocate so as to ensure that any eventual decision will have been thoroughly discussed and examined for flaws.
But save that stuff for the White House … a campaign can’t have any black sheep, (either real or imagined in the Karl Rovian minds of your opponent).
[/QUOTE]
It’s ignorant of the business to think that the campaign staff doesn’t become the WH staff. To exclude them from one excludes them from the other.
As far as the press is concerned, anything untoward that a staffer said would have been more scandalous, not less, with a government job. Can you imagine the reaction if Amanda Marcotte were in the administration? Remember how the right ripped into Clinton’s people for everything they said or did? The real scandal is that the inoffensive Melissa McEwan got slammed as anti-Catholic & tarred as just as offensive as Marcotte because she was a young feminist blogger, so obviously she must be the same. :rolleyes: I find that attitude really really offensive.
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
I’m not saying that members of a campaign can’t have their own opinions or that they can’t disagree with each other. Obviously, they can, and obviously they should express those opinions within the campaign itself. But when it comes to talking publically, its their job to be “good soldiers” and support the party line, even if they don’t agree with it.
[/QUOTE]
Well, I’m not sure that’s always best. Certainly, Edwards was looking for a different model, wherein people working for him were undeniably themselves rather than mouthpieces. I think in a campaign, such an approach actually increases the credibility of his supporters. It requires a balancing act, but not one foreign to educated & serious people in the Western tradition.
In any case, the problem Marcotte had was not with anything she said while working for Edwards, but something she had written before that point in a rude comic style. And McEwan was blasted simply for being another young woman from the same subculture. If you want to fault Edwards, fault him for being pushed into firing McEwan.
[QUOTE=Lamar Mundane]
I like Edwards, but I just don’t think that there is enough money to go around with Obama and Clinton taking so much of it. I think he’s now in there with Bill Richardson hoping for a VP slot.
[/QUOTE]
Actually, “One dollar, one vote,” only applies in the GOP primaries, as Howard Dean found out to his chagrin. The Dems still use “One man, one vote.” I feel constrained to point this out, as that’s why I’m a Democrat.
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
“Blog” is short for “web log”. They’re sort of like online diaries. Lately, political campaigns have been hiring people to create blogs about the campaign. They post comments from the campaign trail, campaign schedules, press related to the campaign or candidate and so on. Here are some examples of campaign blogs.
[/QUOTE]
Thanks. I knew what a blog was, in general, which was what confused me. I had thought of them as personal (like a diary), and didn’t understand why anyone would be hired to write a diary for someone else.
[QUOTE=foolsguinea]
If you want to fault Edwards, fault him for being pushed into firing McEwan.
[/QUOTE]
He didn’t fire McEwan. She quit because she and her family were on the receiving end of a stream of threats and harassment from the wingnuts.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
I think it only makes Edwards look better that he doesn’t want to censor or ideologically profile those who work for him. We’ve had enough enforced lockstep public stances and intolerance for dissent with Bush. Why is it a bad thing to let people disagree with you?
[/QUOTE]
It isnt a bad thing to hire advisors who disagree with you. But for hiring people to help market your campaign, doesn’t it make more sense to hire people who will put their all into promoting you?
Suppose, for example, that you were to work for me in a campaign. How effective would you be — no, really — in helping to sell my positions on health care, taxes, and gun control? Could you even keep a straight face as you argued that taxes are an ethical abomination, and that it isn’t government’s job to solve people’s problems for them? I doubt it.
[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
He didn’t fire McEwan. She quit because she and her family were on the receiving end of a stream of threats and harassment from the wingnuts.
[/QUOTE]
I stand corrected. In that case, the “wingnuts” need to be exposed as using threats to influence a primary election. What I wonder is, if this was coming from the right, why are they using threats to influence the other party’s primary?
Oh, silly me, it’s not about this election, it’s about all future elections. The jihad is eternal.
[QUOTE=foolsguinea]
.Well, I’m not sure that’s always best. Certainly, Edwards was looking for a different model, wherein people working for him were undeniably themselves rather than mouthpieces. I think in a campaign, such an approach actually increases the credibility of his supporters. It requires a balancing act, but not one foreign to educated & serious people in the Western tradition.
[/quote]
Maybe he was, but that puts him in the minority of campaigners, if that’s so. And I think the reason most political campaigns use the other model is because it’s effective. I don’t see an effective campaign being run on the model you’re suggesting.
Yeah, but a person’s past history becomes important to, especially when it’s something on record. And McEwan wasn’t blasted just from being from the same subculture. She had posted about the religious right, “What don’t you lousy motherfuckers understand about keeping your noses out of our britches, our beds, and our families?” and talked about Bush’s “wingnut Christo-fascist base”. Those aren’t particularly diplomatic statements, and for a candidate like Edwards, it’s just kind of unfortunate that opinions like those are being linked to his campaign.