It looks like his last discharge from active duty after being mobilized as a reservist was in 2007. Though his discharge from the regular active duty Marine Corps was in 2005. So Rep. Hunter wouldn’t need a waiver.
It seems a little odd, though, that he didn’t earn any Navy/Marine Corps commendation or achievement medals, let alone a bronze star (which was a typical end-of-imminent danger deployment award) throughout his active duty time. Commendation/achievement medals are standard end-of-tour or end-of-deployment awards for junior officers who generally do their job, or for exceptional performance of a particular job during a particular tour.
I assume that by “school choice” you mean some form of voucher program.
I question how much such a program would help many of the rural poor. Take Wyoming, a largely rural state, for example. According to this site there are private schools in 13 Wyoming counties. Six of these counties have only 1 or 2 private schools. Since Wyoming has 23 counties, most rural poor will not have a private school where they can use a voucher.
I admit that a school voucher system is something I am adamantly opposed to, primarily because I am a strong supporter of the separation of church and state.
Given the large number of private schools that are religiously affiliated, I wonder how such vouchers would work. 64% of those private schools in WY are religiously affiliated; many of them Catholic. Would a Catholic school be required to accept students of other faiths as a condition of accepting the vouchers? Or would non-Catholic students be SOL if the only local private school was Catholic?
I also wonder how those angry white people (and not just the ones in rural ghettoes) will react when they find out that their tax dollars will through a voucher system be underwriting Muslim schools.
That actually happened a couple of years back(Tennessee, I think). School voucher bill passes, the author of the bill finds out it applies to Muslim schools, starts trying to get bill repealed.
Do you think if a school voucher program were widely available some entrepreneurial Wyomians might see fit to take a leap of faith (pardon the pun) and create some additional private schools in those underserved areas?
I don’t necessarily expect everyone to agree with this, but the difference, as I see it, is in terms of the quality of the people who are being considered for nomination. There is a difference, for instance, in nominating cabinet members with a history of overt racism, anti-semitism, and a host of other negative qualities and someone who owe back taxes or hired an undocumented nanny but is otherwise a suitable individual who can represent the public interest. I think people with demonstrably undesirable qualities should not even be considered for public office, and thus should be filibustered.
Of course. Vouchers won’t usually pay full tuition at the really excellent private schools–which tend to have entry exams, as well. But, in order to suck up the voucher money, I’m sure some enterprising folks will pick up some 2nd hand textbooks, KJV’s, and start looking for cheap space for rent. Good education? In programs sponsored by our “new” czarina of education, there’s very little oversight of private or charter schools.
So, the public schools (& those nasty teachers’ unions) will be starved of funds. And some people will make quick money.
Most of the people ‘on your side’ never did believe anyone when they ‘cried’ racist - probably because they’ve never experienced racism and wouldn’t know what it feels like to be subjected to it. I challenge you (and everyone who thinks like you) to give up your comforts and go live in a country for 2-3 years where you are a visible minority. Come back and let me know what you experience.
P.S. I’m not writing the above to be a prick - I respect you, your opinion, and your vote. I’m just saying, I think that there’s a difference between having an opinion and having an opinion based on personal experience.
Well that would depend…in my observation in Asia, for instance, white people are often treated in some ways significantly *better *than local Asians.
I maintain that white privilege is often the *most *pronounced in countries where white people are a minority, rather than a majority as in, say, the USA or Canada.
As others mentioned, Europeans and Americans are often treated as a superior race in some non-European countries(*). :eek:
But there may be another way to experience racism:
Two years ago I posted a link to discussion of a diversity training class (but unfortunately the video has since been removed). In the class, blue-eyed people are discriminated against. One blond blue-eyed girl, who wasn’t particularly concerned about discrimination against blacks, throws a tantrum when a pretend-discrimination operates for a few minutes against her!
(* ETA: Much of the “racism” American tourists complain of is just silly. Foreigners pay a higher price to enter Bangkok’s Grand Palace! Uh … Las Vegas shows are more expensive for people who do not have a Nevada driver’s license.)
I’ve been a minority in Miami neighborhoods growing up. I probably was involved in at least 2 score fights where I was called racial slurs. I know what racism feels like.
According to Wikipedia, 7 of those Wyoming counties have <10,000 people. How many of those are school-age children?
Let’s take as an example Platte County, which is the largest of those with fewer than 10,000 residents (8,756 people), and geographically the second smallest with a bit over 2,000 square miles. Platte County school district #1 has a high school, middle school and 2 elementary schools. Plus there are Chugwater and Glendo schools. (Sorry, I was having trouble figuring out exactly how many schools there are.) But really is there much opportunity for for-profit schools even if the Platte County schools aren’t very good?
Remember that many parents won’t want to switch their children to a school of a different religion even if it much better. And of course how will they know it’s better until the school has operated long enough for there to be some results? How long will a school survive with few students?
2 to 3 years as opposed to a lifetime, and if things got too bad your church could back you up or even bring you back…and if they refused to help you you always had the option to go home yourself.
No, you haven’t “been there” and in no way did you “do that”-you always had a way to escape, and you had back-up.
:dubious: Ooh, now there’s some hardheaded conservative pragmatism for you. “Hey, if we take away public-school money and offer it to private enterprise, we conceivably might get some bidders who want to sink it into difficult, labor-intensive, low-profit high quality education for struggling students instead of making some quick bucks on cheap and shoddy scam schools!” Very rigorously designed funding initiative, that is.
Well, that’s because most of the people on your side seem to have decided that racism doesn’t exist except in the case of explicit self-identification as an outright Nazi or white supremacist.
In short, according to today’s Trumpublican conservatives, as long as you don’t actually call yourself a racist, especially if you’ve ever done anything non-racist, then you can promote, encourage or endorse racist sentiments all you want, and it’s unfair to describe that as racist behavior.
“Gosh, those mean old leftists, continuing to insist that blatantly racist behavior is racist even when the person who did it explicitly said they’re not racist! Why can’t you just take their word for it instead of unfairly expecting their behavior to be consistent with their self-proclaimed non-racism?” :mad: