Ron Paul’s phony populism

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ThaG

Sicc OG
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Jun 30, 2005
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n9newunsixx5150 said:
Yet I haven't seen this attack being made against Ron Paul by anyone. Paul's whole thing is getting the federal govt out of areas they don't need to be in, and giving states more power. Big govt isn't making the programs better. We're just spending more money and creating more debt.
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In this country, it is not the government's goal to make things better. The government does whatever is in the interest of whoever can afford to buy the lawmakers. That's why most things the government does are not in the public interest, and often go directly against the public good. And the reason this is the case is that the laws allow for politicians to be bought - if the government was strong enough and the laws were such that this was much more difficult to do, then the system would work better - I am not saying it would work the way it should for if this is to happen, a radical shiift in everyone's thinking and worldviews is needed, but it would not be as bad as it is right now - there are countries around the world who generally do a decent job at serving the interests of their citizens and none of them does it through limited government, quite the opposite, but none of them has a legalized plutocracy either.

If Ron Paul's policies are implemented and you let the market sort things out, the above situation will become even worse because whatever checks there are to people with money taking all the power will be removed.

It takes one of the following kinds of person to support such policies

1. A person who is going to benefit from them (and who doesn't actually have to believe that stuff)
2. Someone who doesn't know his history, economics, and politics, who doesn't know much about how the world currently works, who has zero understanding of human nature and who is, frankly, gullible and stupid enough to believe such a change will be for their own good.

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of fools around to go into the second category and there are enough skilled con men to feed their delusions in the first.
 
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ThaG

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Jun 30, 2005
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n9newunsixx5150 said:
[video=youtube;da4DY3mGwGI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da4DY3mGwGI[/video]
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The cost of college education is high because the higher educational system is set up to make money, not to educate people. It has long ago abandoned its traditional mission to develop real thinkers and has switched to advertising itself as providing an employment ticket (without even doing a very good job at preparing students for any job). But because most people don't really know much about the system, they don't understand that. They also don't understand that education is not a business and should never be left to the market to sort out (the market is the very reason why education is in such a sorry state right now) but due to the rampant anti-intellectualism in this society, this is a point you will rarely hear being made.
 
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ThaG

Sicc OG
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http://www.philanthropydaily.com/?p=7495

Anti-intellectualism and higher education

By Naomi Schaefer Riley | 8 Nov 2011 | 2,056 views
The new emphasis on accountability in higher education can have its upsides but the last couple of weeks have reminded me about the anti-intellectualism that often seems to come with such movements.

A couple of weeks ago, Rick Scott, Governor of Florida, suggested that producing degrees in anthropology was not a “vital interest” of his state. He told some editorial writers that there are only a limited number of jobs for anthropologists and wondered why were were producing so many. As a case in point, he cited his daughter who has a degree in anthropology from the College of William and Mary and said that her major did not lead her to a job.

A predictable uproar over these comments ensued, with academics across the country accusing Scott of knowing nothing about higher education. They have a point. First of all, a traditional bachelor’s degree is not supposed to be a vocational education. Kids who have degrees in anthropology do not, for the most part, go on to be anthropologists, but that doesn’t mean their degree is worthless. Anthropology is not the first social science or humanities degree I would choose to defend–there is plenty of nonsense in any anthropology curriculum–but at many schools, anthropology classes do require serious reading and writing.

As it turns out, Mr. Scott, that’s what a lot of employers are looking for. Employers I have spoken to over the years have repeatedly complained to me that students cannot write a coherent memo or send an email that does not make the company look foolish. A couple of years ago Wharton, the premier business school in the country, started a remedial writing program for its students. There are firms all over the country that attempt to train employees to speak and write correct English.

Parents have joked for years about their kids’ decisions to major in English or Philosophy, complaining to each other that these are not practical majors. In fact, they turn out to be gaining valuable skills and also, by the way, working much harder than their counterparts in majors that Rick Scott might find more practical, like business. In their book Academically Adrift, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa compared the performance of students in different majors. Here’s the New York Times summary :

[They] looked at the performance of students at 24 colleges and universities. At the beginning of freshman year and end of sophomore year, students in the study took the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a national essay test that assesses students’ writing and reasoning skills. During those first two years of college, business students’ scores improved less than any other group’s. Communication, education and social-work majors had slightly better gains; humanities, social science, and science and engineering students saw much stronger improvement.
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What accounts for those gaps? Dr. Arum and Dr. Roksa point to sheer time on task. Gains on the C.L.A. closely parallel the amount of time students reported spending on homework. Another explanation is the heavy prevalence of group assignments in business courses: the more time students spent studying in groups, the weaker their gains in the kinds of skills the C.L.A. measures.

(This is not to say that there are not useless or non-rigorous humanities and social science courses. Last weekend, a young woman called up the show Car Talk on NPR and revealed to Click and Clack that she was majoring in “Photography and Community Studies.” They reasonably wondered whether her parents were aware of this.)

One thing that parents and university administrators and students used to agree upon was the utility of majoring in the STEM fields. Everyone knew that these majors led to jobs. Or I thought they did. According to a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education last week , the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board voted to phase out 64 degree programs that failed to attract enough majors. At Texas Southern University, for instance, those majors included chemistry, math, physics, English, and art. (English and chemistry were given a 2-year reprieve at the meeting).

So why aren’t enough people at places like Texas Southern majoring in things like chemistry and math even though jobs in those fields are much more readily available? For one thing, of course, they’re more difficult. As a piece in today’s Education Life section of the New York Times explains, “Studies have found that roughly 40 percent of students planning engineering and science majors end up switching to other subjects or failing to get any degree.” Everyone knows that grade inflation is significant in the humanities and social sciences but not in the hard sciences.

As long as the STEM fields are harder to succeed in, students are going to flock to other majors instead. So what are the solutions here? Eliminating STEM fields? Is that in the “interest of the state”? There are two obvious answers. First, eliminate the grade disparity. And second, eliminate some of the useless, non-rigorous majors. Let’s start with business. And community studies.
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ThaG

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Jun 30, 2005
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http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/10/04/albany

Disappearing Languages at Albany
October 4, 2010 - 3:00am
By
Scott Jaschik
The State University of New York at Albany's motto is "the world within reach." But language faculty members are questioning the university's commitment to such a vision after being told Friday that the university was ending all admissions to programs in French, Italian, Russian and classics, leaving only Spanish left in the language department once current students graduate. The theater department is also being eliminated.
While the last two years have seen many language departments threatened or eliminated, faculty members at Albany said they were stunned that so many languages were being eliminated at the same time and that this was happening at a doctoral university that has prided itself on an international vision. The French program extends to the doctoral level while all the other programs have undergraduate majors as well as many students who take language courses as part of general education but who do not major.
Ten tenured faculty members in language programs were told Friday that they would have two years of employment in which to help current students finish their degrees, but that they would then be out of their jobs, according to several who were at the meeting. About 20 adjuncts and several others on the tenure track but not tenured are also at risk of losing their jobs, potentially even earlier, although details are not available.
A university spokeswoman, asked about the details of faculty jobs, said that "no faculty are losing their jobs this year and at this stage it's too early to determine when faculty positions will actually be impacted," but those who were at the briefing for the dropped departments Friday said that they were told explicitly that their jobs would be eliminated. The spokeswoman, however, said that the meeting Friday was "the beginning of a conversation about the future," without any decisions about faculty jobs.
"We were told [of the eliminations] without any hint" in advance of any concern about the programs, said Jean-François Brière, a professor of French studies and chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. Brière, who has taught at the university since 1979, said that even in the context of budget cuts this year, he was shocked. "No other university of the caliber and size" of Albany has done this, he said.
George M. Philip, Albany's president, cited deep, repeated budget cuts as requiring the university to move beyond across-the-board cuts or identifying one-time savings.
Under current budget projections, he said in a statement on the cuts, by the end of 2012, administrative units will have had state funds cut by 22.4 percent and academic units will have had funds cut by 16 percent. Hundreds of positions have been eliminated, largely through leaving vacancies unfilled. "This decision was based on an extensive consultative process with faculty, and in recognition that there are comparatively fewer students enrolled in these degree programs," Philip said. While all the programs slated for elimination are part of the university's liberal arts offerings, he said that "this action does not reflect the quality of the faculty appointed to these program areas, or the value of these subjects to the liberal arts." (Faculty union leaders and language faculty said that they knew of no consultation, and Faculty Senate leaders did not respond to inquiries.)
He also cited the failure of the New York Legislature to pass legislation -- strongly backed by SUNY leaders -- that would have given more control over tuition rates and the use of tuition revenue to the state's university systems, and would have saved them money by releasing them from a range of regulatory requirements.
Language faculty dispute the idea that there was sufficient consultation, saying that they were never given a chance to explain their enrollment numbers.
Eloise Brière, an associate professor of French studies, said that the seven tenured French faculty members each year collectively teach about 500 students who are not majors, about 40 at various stages of the major, and about 40 graduate students. She said that these numbers may seem low compared to departments that are able to have large introductory courses with hundreds of students.
"You cannot teach languages to an auditorium of 200," she said. "It is the nature of what we do that we are then seen as unproductive." Making decisions in this way "devalues the liberal arts," she said.
Like her husband, Brière is long-term at Albany, having taught there since 1982. She said she was particularly concerned about younger faculty members, citing those recruited in recent years, one of whom gave up tenure elsewhere. "This is devastating," she said.
Phil Smith, president of United University Professions, the SUNY faculty union, which is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, said that it was correct that SUNY has suffered deep budget cuts, but he questioned both the process and the decision. He said that the Albany chapter of the union was not consulted on the cuts, even though changes of this magnitude should have led to such discussions.
Even with a need for cuts, he said, some programs need protection at a comprehensive university like Albany. "I can't understand how a university can eliminate classics programs and languages like Italian and French," he said.
Rosemary G. Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association, said via e-mail: "The plans of the State University of New York at Albany to deny students access to higher learning in three modern and two classical languages are a distressing reverse to the university’s recent efforts to promote global competencies. The advanced study of the languages, literatures, and cultures of the French-, Italian-, and Russian-speaking world are essential components of a liberal arts education in a university setting. While these are financially difficult times for the SUNY system, an institution of the caliber of the University at Albany should honor its claim to offer students a comprehensive, world-class education."
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CaseyJones

CaseyJones

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ThaG said:
The cost of college education is high because the higher educational system is set up to make money, not to educate people. It has long ago abandoned its traditional mission to develop real thinkers and has switched to advertising itself as providing an employment ticket (without even doing a very good job at preparing students for any job). But because most people don't really know much about the system, they don't understand that. They also don't understand that education is not a business and should never be left to the market to sort out (the market is the very reason why education is in such a sorry state right now) but due to the rampant anti-intellectualism in this society, this is a point you will rarely hear being made.
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Government money pumped into private enterprise is THE recipe for reduced efficiency and increasing costs. I challenge you to find the exception to this...

As far a pure capitalism, we don't have it or anything close to it. To critique the current system is FAR from criticizing capitalism.
 
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ThaG

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CaseyJones said:
Government money pumped into private enterprise is THE recipe for reduced efficiency and increasing costs. I challenge you to find the exception to this...

As far a pure capitalism, we don't have it or anything close to it. To critique the current system is FAR from criticizing capitalism.
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I actually didn't say anything about capitalism there. I just said that when it comes to educational matters, profit should have nothing to do with how the system is set up because education is one of those things together with health care that should NEVER be left to market forces to sort out. But precisely because it has been largely left to market forces to sort out, we have the current mess (both in education and in health care).
 
Nefariouz1

Nefariouz1

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America/The World would be a better place if the federal reserve was ended. I agree. This whole worlds backwards, everyones fucked. Everythings corrupt and funded by the worlds richest/corruptest people. Education, Banking , Healthcare, Free Energy Sources , Media ect... Everyone supposed to live there little life and not question anything because the worlds been set up so that if you do question anything you look nuts. Or claim to have knowledge about what's really going on that you're just probably going through a little faze of researching conspiracies.. Nah... The whole worlds in debt to some of the most powerful people and it's pretty much impossible to ever pay it off. For those with mass wealth, this is the board game and they've rigged it nicely for themselves. I don't know what I think about this Ron Paul character but some of his ideas are pretty legit. Especially the whole end the fed thing.
 
Mac Jesus

Mac Jesus

Girls send me your nudes
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I believe the answer is 42 (the natural number immediately following 41 and directly preceding 43) not quite sure of the question though.
 
CaseyJones

CaseyJones

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I think there's a good chance that your Utopian Technocracy would play out in real life like all communism and forced collectivism in other places have historically. Especially with the corporate psychopaths and megalomaniacs who currently occupy our government at the helm. That's the first order of business as far as I'm concerned (and might as well be the only one)...tackle the rampant corruption in the system and things will get exponentially better. I just don't think any of them have any grasp or the will to tackle these problems, other than Ron Paul...indeed, every other candidate is more than likely guilty of taking advantage of it and/or hoping to exploit it.
 
CaseyJones

CaseyJones

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FDA Is Accused of Spying on Its Employees, Using Info to “Dismiss” Them


Employees of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accused the agency of secretly spying on staff members who told lawmakers it was improperly approving medical devices used to screen for cancer.

The FDA will not comment at all on pending litigation, but Fox News reports that FDA computers do say they have a right to monitor or intercept any communication.

Judge Napolitano joined Studio B to discuss the legality of this issue. He brought up the 4th Amendment and said that cases are all over the place. While federal judges have ruled that the employer can look at employee, work-related e-mails and cannot look at private e-mails, Napolitano said, “No judges have said that the employer can look at private e-mails and reveal what they see. That’s a fact and that’s apparently what the FDA did here.”

Cont. http://foxnewsinsider.com/2012/01/3...n-its-employees-using-info-to-“dismiss”-them/
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[video]http://video.insider.foxnews.com/v/1423863650001/[/video]



The FDA are the same geniuses ThaG wants to be responsible for the health and well being of you and your family. Why are the Technocrats at the FDA doing this, ThaG? They're supposed to look out for us, breaux...
 
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