Search by Author (Last month only)
Public forum posts since 29 Feb '24 .
Enter the exact name of the post author
  1. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
    New York
    Joined
    26 Dec '07
    Moves
    17585
    21 Mar '24 12:34
    @mott-the-hoople said
    I guess you missed the (edu) AJ included
    a disingenuous lib tactic
    Just trying to educate. 😉
  2. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
    New York
    Joined
    26 Dec '07
    Moves
    17585
    20 Mar '24 21:22
    @wildgrass said
    Anyway, as I've been on record saying many times, I don't blame anyone for closing schools in the initial panic of the Spring of 2020. I blame those who made the same decisions after there had been plenty of time to clear their heads.

    Stop beating around the bush, mate. You really wanna discuss who NOT to blame? Who is history coming for?

    The national re ...[text shortened]... is would be like blaming the construction worker for a traffic jam.

    You wanna blame teachers? Or?
    No; I don't blame teachers. It's absurd to blame someone who takes advantage of an opportunity to make their lives easier without losing pay.

    I do blame the leadership of the teachers' unions. But I especially blame the politicians and administrators who allowed schools to be closed into 2021 (and beyond, in some cases).
  3. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
    New York
    Joined
    26 Dec '07
    Moves
    17585
    20 Mar '24 18:20
    Assuming you support anyone but Trump (as most people on this board obviously do), the battleground polling has got to be at least a little concerning.

    According to aggregator RCP's list of battleground polls (Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia) it has been almost 2 months, since January 28 (a Franklin & Marshall poll that gave him a one point lead in PA), that Biden has led in a single poll in ANY of those states, a period covering 20 polls that showed Trump tied or up in those states (and only the two oldest WI polls were tied).

    https://www.realclearpolling.com/elections/president/2024/battleground-states
  4. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
    New York
    Joined
    26 Dec '07
    Moves
    17585
    20 Mar '24 17:34
    @averagejoe1 said
    This country has many sources of tuition loans. I got one myself, and paid it off in 5 years. The only requirement is good grades and scoring well on the LSAT. So I dpn't get you there, unless you are of the camp who wants college to be 'free'. Can you imagine the influx of losers who slide in, so that they can not have to enter the business world just yet? Total was ...[text shortened]... llege is not admissable for those who belong there. Planning, SH76. Making choices. Not that hard.
    Even forgetting grants, without Stafford loans subsidized by the Education Department you want to shut down (by the way, the DOE is the Department of Energy, not Education), paying for college is very difficult for many people.
  5. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
    New York
    Joined
    26 Dec '07
    Moves
    17585
    20 Mar '24 17:30
    @kevcvs57 said
    Well Keynesian economics says it pays for itself in the end result and pump priming has its critics but it’s a better way of getting an economy moving that giving billionaires even more money.
    FDR pulled the USA out of the gutter using those principles and it was ready to come out of wwwII as the only real super power apart from the heavily centralised and low growth Stalinist USSR
    I'm not sure it's clear whether the New Deal shortened or lengthened the Great Depression, but even assuming the New Deal was the perfect thing to do at the time, it was such because of the Depression. Even FDR would never have proposed his package other than to fight the Depression.
  6. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
    New York
    Joined
    26 Dec '07
    Moves
    17585
    20 Mar '24 15:301 edit
    @averagejoe1 said
    Get rid of agencies starting with useless DOE (edu), and welfare dole out programs. DOE alone is about 100M a year. 100m here, 100M there can add up to $500B soon enough.
    One of the holes in lib arguments is that they want to implement an idea that will 'go for 10 years', as if there would be NO SURPRISES that would be beging for more money. Is that when, since you ...[text shortened]... ? Or will you say, that , No AvJoe, the 10 year program will make us all whole again??!?!??! haha
    So, your plan is to get 1/5 of the way there by making college inaccessible for half of the people?

    Well, the best I can say is that at least you've started to answer the question.
  7. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
    New York
    Joined
    26 Dec '07
    Moves
    17585
    20 Mar '24 15:27
    @kevcvs57 said
    I don’t like a financial stimulus as in ( quantitative easing ) printing money to support the banking system but one that is targeted at infrastructure and manufacturing at home can’t really go wrong because at the end of the day a modern economy must have a reliable and functional infrastructure to operate and it generates jobs that can only be done by tax paying Americans
    Of course it can go wrong.

    Infrastructure spending is fine in principle, but when you don't bring in the money to pay for it, deficits explode, and when you're not pulling it out of the economy in taxes at (roughly) the same rate that you're bringing it in, runaway inflation is inevitable eventually.

    If you want to spend on infrastructure, fine. But then you need to slash the budget somewhere else, figure out a way to bring in that money from somewhere that doesn't cripple the economy, or a combination thereof.

    Hey, I'm a Keynesian. I am fully in favor of some level of deficit spending or loosening the money supply in a crisis or recession, but to do it just because "infrastructure is good" must lead ultimately to disaster.
  8. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
    New York
    Joined
    26 Dec '07
    Moves
    17585
    20 Mar '24 15:211 edit
    @averagejoe1 said
    Easy. Reduce spending. Have you seen Biden's latest plan of spending?
    It is either that, or apply the rule of Baby Face Nelson, who said 'Why do I rob banks? Because that is where the money is!' So, y'all favor the second choice. Surely you have seen that the money of billionaires is a drop in the bucket, a spit in the ocean. It will not even dent the costs of ...[text shortened]... ple we are slashing free-money programs, some of which pay out more than someone would make working?
    Reducing spending by an amount necessary to close the federal budget deficit is impossible. Just mandatory spending and interest on the debt expenses are more than we collect in taxes.

    But fine, let's say we slash spending. So we only have to raise an additional $500 billion per year, not a trillion.

    So let's change the assignment. You have to raise another $500 billion per year or you're fired.

    Go.
  9. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
    New York
    Joined
    26 Dec '07
    Moves
    17585
    20 Mar '24 12:41
    @kevcvs57 said
    I stopped being confidant about electorates after Brexit here in the UK. Hearts are more likely to turn out for elections than heads.
    I’m not confident about Biden winning, too many variables like migration concerns, Gaza, at least suppressing the young and minority votes that he counts on, I don’t think inflation and the economy will be bd enough in November to make a difference.
    As you say Trump is Biden’s only hope and by his own words he gets more toxic everyday.
    I don't agree about inflation. Even if inflation comes down between now and November, people aren't just going to forget that their dollar buys half of what it did in 2020.

    Yes, it's partially Trump's fault too, but the incumbent President always eats the blame for economic woes and Biden certainly deserves his fair share of the blame for the runaway inflation of 2021 and 2022.

    The first stimulus in March of 2020 was necessary to stave off a covid depression. Everything after that was political pandering.
  10. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
    New York
    Joined
    26 Dec '07
    Moves
    17585
    20 Mar '24 12:33
    @averagejoe1 said
    https://reason.com/2024/03/14/bidens-proposed-corporate-tax-hike-will-punish-the-average-american/

    So MANY reasons, how about restricting corporations investing more in the company. Do y'all REALLY think Biden has the best minds when it comes to economics?
    Okay, AJ, let me ask you:

    You are in charge of the Internal Revenue Code and you must raise an extra Trillion dollars a year. Otherwise, you're fired.

    What do you do?

    Go.
  11. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
    New York
    Joined
    26 Dec '07
    Moves
    17585
    20 Mar '24 12:281 edit
    @shavixmir said
    Of course closing schools is never a good thing.

    But, sometimes you have to make tough decisions based on the information at hand.

    And evaluations shouldn’t be about pointing fingers, they should increase knowledge so better decisions can be made in the future.

    Typical, ill-informed, extremist malarkey.

    Oh, and by the way, studies have shown that missing out on ...[text shortened]... on isn’t a tragedy.

    Obviously “preferably not” , but if it happens, the world isn’t going to end.
    ===Oh, and by the way, studies have shown that missing out on the last year of primary school does not have any serious or long lasting effect on students.===

    What about the first year? Or second?

    Not every child was in his/her last year of primary school in 2021.

    Anyway, as I've been on record saying many times, I don't blame anyone for closing schools in the initial panic of the Spring of 2020. I blame those who made the same decisions after there had been plenty of time to clear their heads.


    ===Typical, ill-informed, extremist malarkey.===

    I have to ask. do you have digital Tourette's or something? I notice this over and over again with you, where you are in the middle of what is otherwise a normal, level-headed post, and all of a sudden you lash out into nobody-can-really-tell-what; and then you go right back to "normal." Like, seriously, what's up with that? Is it just a rule you have that every post has to have at least one wild element?
  12. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
    New York
    Joined
    26 Dec '07
    Moves
    17585
    19 Mar '24 15:05
    @kevcvs57 said
    Of course school closures were and are harmful, so is amputating a limb but it’s better than dying of gangrene.
    Without the context of the harms that would have been caused without severe lockdown which is something we’ll never know because there were far too many people and organisations ignoring the shut downs and distancing / mask mandates
    The article addresses that element as well:

    That was largely unknown in the spring of 2020, when schools first shut down. But several experts said that had changed by the fall of 2020, when there were initial signs that children were less likely to become seriously ill, and growing evidence from Europe and parts of the United States that opening schools, with safety measures, did not lead to significantly more transmission.

    “Infectious disease leaders have generally agreed that school closures were not an important strategy in stemming the spread of Covid,” said Dr. Jeanne Noble, who directed the Covid response at the U.C.S.F. Parnassus emergency department.
  13. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
    New York
    Joined
    26 Dec '07
    Moves
    17585
    19 Mar '24 14:13
    @wildgrass said
    Who's that sh?

    Come on, I know your natural instincts tell you to blame the pansy libbies, but our leader was too busy yelling about rigged elections that hadn't happened yet. Too chicken to make a decision.

    Meanwhile we ran out of teachers. Maybe instead of a blame game, it could be lessons learned. Enact clear national guidelines, prepare schools for situations wher ...[text shortened]... s unions are on board with the plan, don't vote for demagogues who only care about their self image.
    To start with, I'm not blaming any specific political philosophy. I'm blaming the people who kept schools into the 2020-2021 school year (and especially beyond that). I don't care what their other political beliefs are.

    And we didn't "run out of" anything. Of course teachers who were given the option of going to work or staying home and getting paid the same were going to opt to stay home in large numbers. We didn't need to give them that option. We could have told them to show up to work or lose their incomes. You know, like every other job.
  14. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
    New York
    Joined
    26 Dec '07
    Moves
    17585
    19 Mar '24 13:20
    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/upshot/pandemic-school-closures-data.html

    History is coming for the into-2021 school closure champions.
  15. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
    New York
    Joined
    26 Dec '07
    Moves
    17585
    17 Mar '24 14:46
    @kevcvs57 said
    Not disagreeing, suppressing the turnout is their only hope with trump on the ticket.
    I think Biden managing to thread the needle between placating the young an minority voters and the pro Israeli majority in the dems on the Gaza issue might be the crux of the election in November
    October the 7th was a bonus ball for Netanyahu, Putin and Trump. I’m not a conspiracy theorist but these timing issues have turned history many times
    I don't think Oct 7 was a big enough issue to swing the election unless it was super-close anyway. If a few Muslims from Dearborn staying home is enough to swing Michigan to Trump, Biden was in trouble anyway.

    Anyway, aside from Muslims, I don't think most young voters really give a damn about Gaza anyway. Marching on campus against white colonialism is all good fun, but they don't really give a damn about the starving Gazans any more than they give a damn about the starving Haitians (does anyone even know that crisis is occurring?).

    The election is about whether the Biden negatives of his age, inflation and immigration are enough to overcome the Trump negatives of being Trump.

    I still think Biden is going to win ultimately because Trump is just too toxic, but I'm not as confident as I was 2 months ago.
Back to Top

Search Site Content

Cookies help us deliver our Services. By using our Services or clicking I agree, you agree to our use of cookies. Learn More.I Agree