Mikkel
Pragmatist
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2005
- Messages
- 489
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- Cleveland, OH
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Liberal
Missouri Mule said:I graduated in 1961 and can assure you that all of us in our class of 150 can add 2 plus 2 and know the presidents. I can't speak for the kids of 1971. I guess that's the time that the liberals took over things which happens to be the time that LBJ's "Great Society" came into being and the money vaults were thrown open to the greedy and corrupt. And education went into the toilet.
I've not studied your numbers. Let me say this. I spent the last years of my working life working with statistics. I know how easily they can be manipulated. Don't be so sure how accurate they are. As Mark Twain said, "There are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics." Remember that always if you don't agree with anything else I say.
Mikkel said:I see the problems, I follow the money. The problem isn't the source, it's the fact that there isn't enough money to begin with.
Go respond to Kelzie, she really wants you to.
Missouri Mule said:I graduated in 1961 and can assure you that all of us in our class of 150 can add 2 plus 2 and know the presidents. I can't speak for the kids of 1971. I guess that's the time that the liberals took over things which happens to be the time that LBJ's "Great Society" came into being and the money vaults were thrown open to the greedy and corrupt. And education went into the toilet.
I've not studied your numbers. Let me say this. I spent the last years of my working life working with statistics. I know how easily they can be manipulated. Don't be so sure how accurate they are. As Mark Twain said, "There are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics." Remember that always if you don't agree with anything else I say.
Kelzie said:How predictable. The numbers are wrong. Kids really are dumber than they used to be. I've given some numbers. Now it's your turn. Pony up. How about one on the number of kids graduating who can't add or read.
Missouri Mule said:And how much money is that? Are you of age where you are actually paying taxes? When you are, let me know. OK?
That would be impractical for several reasons, first and foremost, there were 3,000 students at my high school, so having a key code would just be pointless.Missouri Mule said:In my ideal school we don't have security guards and all of that other stuff. It's either shape up or ship out. You could put a security combination lock on the front door or some other kind of security system to keep out the bad ones. The school children are there to learn; period. The trouble makers are outta there. The bad ones can be sent to reform school like they did in the old days. In those days the judges told these delinquents to go to jail or into the military. A lot of these punks actually went on and became national heroes in the old days and onto good productive lives. There wasn't any of that touchy-feely nonsense back then. And it didn't cost much either.
Missouri Mule said:I didn't say the numbers were wrong. I said I hadn't studied them and then I told you about what I did for a living in the REAL world. I know how statistics are fudged. For example, I can tell you for a virtual certainty that the "No kid left behind" is a sham and a fraud, but the numbers won't reflect that.
Mikkel said:I've been paying taxes for years now, and I've been glad to do it. Don't patronize me. Anyway, if you're mainly complaining about sales tax, I've been paying taxes since I was 5 years old.
You do a good job of telling other people that they're wrong but don't add anything substantial to your argument except rhetoric and rant. Any evidence supporting you would be accepted, but instead you choose to remain hard nosed on something that is clearly a personal, rather than political, issue for you.
Missouri Mule said:I didn't say the numbers were wrong. I said I hadn't studied them and then I told you about what I did for a living in the REAL world. I know how statistics are fudged. For example, I can tell you for a virtual certainty that the "No kid left behind" is a sham and a fraud, but the numbers won't reflect that.
Mikkel said:So we're to take your word on that, are we? I recognize that numbers can be fudged, but that doesn't make you right and us wrong. It just means that the numbers don't support you, so to defend your position, you attack the numbers.
Missouri Mule said:I'm not going to take up my time to analyze these numbers. I don't have the time or inclination. I used to pour over numbers every day on spreadsheets and the like to see what was going on. The old saying that "garbage in and garbage out" is still true, even today.
What I do know for a fact is that our prisons are filling up with the uneducated. And I don't have to study the numbers to know that and neither do you.
Missouri Mule said:You like paying taxes, do you? Do you also like your tax dollars wasted as well? Do you honestly sit there and want to tell me we are getting good value for our money? Gimme a break. I was born, but not yesterday.
BTW, I did give some very relevant facts; quite specific, actually. I pointed out the size of our national budget in the 1960s and what it is now and the relative increase in our inflation. And if you really want an eye opener go back and look at the national budget prior to WWII or before that, check when we had no national income tax. Funny how we managed without all those dollars flowing into Washington and our state capitols. But it is never enough to satisfy the liberal lobby. Gimme, gimme, gimme is their rallying cry.
I've had liberals tell me that they love paying taxes. They point to such places as Sweden and tell me what a wonderful place it must be with all of their socialized medicine and the like. The question I always have, is if you like it so much, why don't you go live there, then? Renounce your American citizenship and live in these socialist paradises. Or they could go down to the wonderful island paradise of Cuba where everyone is equally poor and impoverished and medical care is free (or supposedly so.) Somehow they never seem to want to do that. Wonder why?
Missouri Mule said:Now you have gone off the deep end.
First of all, I didn't even vote for Bush. You implied that I did.
Secondly, my main beef is that the inner city students ARE not being educated. It's not an "at all" situation. It's a fact.
The problem that I have with liberals is that they are supremely naive and incapable of critical thinking. During the Great Depression "relief" came to the people who were on the verge of starvation. We had something on the order of 1/3 of the working people out of work and people were barely able to survive. My own family lived in southeast Missouri as sharecroppers and didn't have a pot to **** in. They had to eat the bark off of trees and in bad times had to boil their shoes to have something to eat. A good day's pay was a $1 a day if you could find work. But then the war came along with it and with it came relative prosperity.
Moving right along, things progressed until the LBJ came up with his "Great Society." He had great power with both the presidency, and huge majorities in Congress. They went hog wild with all of these liberal programs. If I recall correctly the national budget didn't exceed $100 billion unitl the mid or late 60's. It is now $2.8 trillion dollars. We have NOT had 2,800 % inflation since then. Maybe 500-600% inflation but not 2,800% inflation. Meanwhile all of this tax money has gone in to fund the schemes the government bureaucrats could concoct and to buy the continued votes of the constituents of Congress to where they now have virtual lifetime employment in D.C. That's where we are today.
When I began school in 1949, I went to a one room school house on a hill about a mile from where I lived. I walked to school as did all my classmates. There were eight grades in that school house. We took our lunches to school in our lunch boxes and ate in the basement. We had our recesses where we played on the swings and softball in the adjoining field. There were no sports programs that needed funding. We didn't have school "counselors" and all of that liberal mumbo-jumbo crap that passes for education today. And if one stepped out of line, the teacher rapped our knuckles or called the parents to take their brats home. Later on, I attended an area wide school district and rode a school bus 12 miles to the high school I attended. I was kicked off the bus and made to walk to and from the school to my home for pulling a girl's hair on the bus. The principal walked the halls with a paddle in his hand and woe to anyone stepping out of line. One time a made a wisecrack in class and the teacher slapped me in the face. That got my attention.
What we have today are glorified day care centers for the kids to get them out of the house so the parents can do their thing. Then the kids come home and do their thing. Our prisons are filling up with these kids who can't do fundamental skills to hold a job so instead they hold up liquor and convenience stores. One of the growing industries in Texas is our ever increasing prison system. That's the net result of the failing education system of today. Why would anyone, liberal or conservative, want to preserve that system? Beats the hell out of me.
Missouri Mule said:You like paying taxes, do you? Do you also like your tax dollars wasted as well? Do you honestly sit there and want to tell me we are getting good value for our money? Gimme a break. I was born, but not yesterday.
BTW, I did give some very relevant facts; quite specific, actually. I pointed out the size of our national budget in the 1960s and what it is now and the relative increase in our inflation. And if you really want an eye opener go back and look at the national budget prior to WWII or before that, check when we had no national income tax. Funny how we managed without all those dollars flowing into Washington and our state capitols. But it is never enough to satisfy the liberal lobby. Gimme, gimme, gimme is their rallying cry.
I've had liberals tell me that they love paying taxes. They point to such places as Sweden and tell me what a wonderful place it must be with all of their socialized medicine and the like. The question I always have, is if you like it so much, why don't you go live there, then? Renounce your American citizenship and live in these socialist paradises. Or they could go down to the wonderful island paradise of Cuba where everyone is equally poor and impoverished and medical care is free (or supposedly so.) Somehow they never seem to want to do that. Wonder why?
galenrox said:they do that in a lot of schools. They did that in mine.
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