Surprise...the game is rigged

[DiscoBiscuit]

Right, because group think and hive mentality is much more useful to the state to maintain the status quo.

DOE has been on the scene for several decades and Americans have statistically become dumber and dumber every year. What's the statist solution? Why more central statist intervention, of course, which has led to an entitled, spoiled, lazy, and dumb population.

Our future is bright.

Yeah, I hate group think. I'd like to enterprise my own transportation solution but I couldn't afford anything that wasn't imagined, manufactured and applied for the masses.

Same thing with my home. I'd really like to self-enterprise something that says "me" but finances dictate buying what the masses are inclined to consider.

Sarcasm off. I enjoy modern society enough to realize that individual enterprise may be more expensive than practical application allows.

 

[bentom187]

here's a good investigative report on public schools wich goes over various systems being tried and compares them with the public systems.


Stupid in America:jhon stossel

[YOUTUBEIF]Bx4pN-aiofw[/YOUTUBEIF]

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

What does it cost and can the average family afford it?

If we base our decision on, "they need to find a way to afford it" we may find the more expensive solution is unattainable. We may spend more money for worse results.

For example, W didn't like Head Start. Before W, states implemented their education programs and Head Start was the only federal backstop for states who couldn't afford to pay for the programs they implemented. That said, Head Start is means tested. You don't get it if you don't qualify.

W substituted Head Start with No Child Left Behind. No Child Left Behind isn't economic aid for poor children in cash-strapped states. No Child Left Behind changed the curriculum to teaching-to-the-test. (That's for all public-school kids) Bottom line, testing scores are lower when teaching-to-test. We already knew this for decades from public education trials but no one ever applied it nationally until W.

No Child Left Behind fails not only in performance, it costs more than Head Start and forces states to cut additional services to feed poor kids at school. Neil Bush was the private entity who sold the No Child Left Behind software to DOE. This is an example of privatization to better the community and simultaneously profit from services that were once delivered at cost.

Only problem, the community aspect isn't better and it costs more.

There's are no measurable successes from No Child Left Behind unless one considers the millions Neil Bush made selling it.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

Lawmakers in favor of privatization basically make two arguments:

Privateer - It's better! (while simultaneously tailpiping the banana)

Reality - It's actually cost prohibitive.

Privateer - You're a cock block!

 

[bentom187]

thats a example of government in bed with corperations thats not freemarket competition of private individuals programs.

NCLB is a private program implimented on a captive audience because theres no where else to go to school.

so privitized w/ government funds = corpratisim

a private citizen like you or me,we compete against whoever with a profit /loss motive ,no ones going to save us,but we learn and we can try again if we are not too bad in debt with a good plan to get out of the red if we are.

if we are succesfull then we employ our fellow man so he doesnt have to make a decision of taxes and government rule or freedom to profit or close shop, and then learn and make real progress.

 

[SpasticGramps]

Yeah, I hate group think. I'd like to enterprise my own transportation solution but I couldn't afford anything that wasn't imagined, manufactured and applied for the masses.

I guess I was speaking more towards Keynesianism (group think). Just another economic ideology whose application will eventually fail.

There is no one economic system, or "ideology", that has withstood the test of time.

Today this systemic failure has become colloquially known as the (reoccurring) "black swan event" IMO.

 

[SpasticGramps]

No Child Left Behind fails not only in performance, it costs more than Head Start and forces states to cut additional services to feed poor kids at school. Neil Bush was the private entity who sold the No Child Left Behind software to DOE. This is an example of privatization to better the community and simultaneously profit from services that were once delivered at cost.

Only problem, the community aspect isn't better and it costs more.

There's are no measurable successes from No Child Left Behind unless one considers the millions Neil Bush made selling it.

Such a tragedy indeed. No Child Left Behind ends up being Every Child Left Behind.

Statist central planning epic fail (or achievement depending on the agenda).

The educational system of a crony capitalist militant empire is usually not smiled upon in the pages of history.

 

[_Dude]

I saw on the news that even if you wanted to buy shares in Facebook, you couldn't. All available shares had already been bought up by the mega-rich. Commonly stock broker houses were requiring at least $250,000 in available account funds to buy any shares and the cheapest one they found said $150,000 available, but the catch 22 is that all shares were immediately bought by huge stock brokerages so none were available. That $38 dollars per share everyone hears about was just the initial cost to them. By the time any shares are made available they may cost twice that, thus making huge profits for the already mega-rich. Does anyone else think that there something is very wrong there?

This post is looking pretty funny right about now, as the FB share price hovers just above 30.

I guess it depends on how you look at it. Do YOU want to invest in Facebook? Personally I think it will crash and burn, they have no track record of making money off of their users so why would anyone invest? Yes it is big and has a shit load of users but if you look at their ad impressions it is worse than most webpages and companies are reporting horrible click through rates from FB. My schadenfreude is watching this fucker burn to the ground, not a FB fan.

Maj. Cottonmouth wins the thread.

 

[SpasticGramps]

More lolz at FaceBomb. It's sunk below 30 and is hanging on to a 29 handle right now.

I see strong technical support at $0.

 

[SpasticGramps]

FaceBomb at a $28 handle and collapsing lololol.

What do you think about that Mr. Mark Fuckerberg?

 

[whodare]

lol looks like investors heard of the facebook phone and were not excited...

 

[dagnabit]

Ill buy it under $6.

It will swing back to 20 after that.

 

[SpasticGramps]

One of the writers on MarketWatch ran the numbers and had it valued at $13. That was a generous case scenario valuation.

A lot of FB users are switching to mobile which FB has no means of monetizing right now. Mark is going to have to buy some productive company to generate revenue.

Every time someone asks him about how he's going to generate revenue he rambles on about "everyone staying interconnected" and how great it is etc etc. That may have worked when he was private, but he's going to have to generate real returns in order to justify his stock price. Not just pyscho-babble.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

Such a tragedy indeed. No Child Left Behind ends up being Every Child Left Behind.

Statist central planning epic fail (or achievement depending on the agenda).

The educational system of a crony capitalist militant empire is usually not smiled upon in the pages of history.

Privatization doesn't involve planning. Privatization word plays to distract the expense.

If Bush planned anything (the privatization of Iraq, the nation building of Afghanistan, the aggregate benefit or boondoggle of Part D, the boondoggle of two tax cuts, etcetera etcetera...) he would have had cost and quality analyses that compare what works vs what doesn't.

Bush had an ideology and that was it. He's just the latest knot in a three-decade string that says, "If I tear it down they will come." Bush's brand of planning was merely a way of thinking that never asks the question, "What if it doesn't work." Don't have to ask, it's not supposed to work. Then the only choice we'll have is privatization for everybody. It's a dog eat dog strategy that sees people in classes and itself as profiteer.


Conservative lawmakers do to government what Bain Capital does to private corporations. Doesn't matter if it works of not. If it works, milk the profit. If milking the profit tears it down, get out of the way and count money.

 

[SpasticGramps]

The executive branch should have nothing to do with education.

The states have the capacity to run public education. They did for a very long time and our educational system wasn't all that bad.

Over the past 30+ years we've become the laughing stock of the world and it gets worse and worse the more they intervene and try and "fix" the educational system.

Bush had more than an ideology. He applied the role of corporatist warmongering tyrant quite effectively. As does his successor. Never mind the lip service that each pay to their "bases."

 

[joesilver]

Facebook is profitable surprisingly, but very overvauled and with not much of a long-term growth strategy.

 

[HempKat]

The executive branch should have nothing to do with education.

The states have the capacity to run public education. They did for a very long time and our educational system wasn't all that bad.

Over the past 30+ years we've become the laughing stock of the world and it gets worse and worse the more they intervene and try and "fix" the educational system.

Bush had more than an ideology. He applied the role of corporatist warmongering tyrant quite effectively. As does his successor. Never mind the lip service that each pay to their "bases."

But if the states do such a bang up job and have been doing so then why do they depend so much on Federal Money? It seems reasonable that if Federal Government is epected to stay out of public education, then Federal Funds via taxpayers should also stay out. Some how I don't think States would do such a bang up job if they didn't have that Federal money feeding it.

For the most part I agree though. As I alluded to before allot of the States with Lotteries sold the lottery idea on the promise of it bolstering education, some states also thru in infrastructure like helping to also maintain roads and bridges. These lotteries are bringing in insane amounts of money and yet year after year we hear about more and more cuts to education and the ones that are suffering most are the students. It's all fine and dandy to focus mainly on academic studies but art and culture is important to develope a well rounded student yet art, music, and field trips to cultural events and museums are practically unheard of these days and if it exists at all parents are now expected to pick up the cost by paying for their children a fee for each field trip. I mean come on where is all the money going? When I was a kid in public school we went on numberous field trips each year and all I ever needed was a permission slip from my parents that it was okay with them that I go. So why now with all the federal money and all the lottery money plus the State's own tax revenue, is it such that we keep trying to whittle down the education of our children, our future? I'm confident in the final analysis what we will find is government contracting is to blame. I think if we could carefully review all the books of the contractors who serve government at state and federal levels we will find something akin to the infamous $500 hammers and such that we've heard about in NASA and Defense contracting. It's the only reasonable explaination for why we keep throwing more and more money at things and yet find ourselves still having to make cuts. Two years ago in this area we had one fairly serious snow storm early on in the season. Just dealling with that one storm the State blew it's entire budget allotment for snow removal. The amount of that allotment was 100 Million dollars. 100 Million? For one storm in one of the smallest states in the country? As a result the state was crippled for the rest of the year and all sorts of other taxes had to be implemented such as added fees for ambulence service or for the fire department/rescue squad to come to a call.

Something is not right too much money disappears too fast and the only logical explaination is that someone is sticking it to us in the invoices and lining thier pockets and nobody is making sure that doesn't happen or that there is any truely competitive bidding for these contracts.

 

[bombadil.360]

where is all the money going?

it's going into the pockets of 'the people', the working 'proles' who are in a position to steal it.

people suck

 

[SpasticGramps]

Something is not right too much money disappears too fast and the only logical explaination is that someone is sticking it to us in the invoices and lining thier pockets and nobody is making sure that doesn't happen or that there is any truely competitive bidding for these contracts.

You are right in pointing out that the fundamental problem to fixing all of our problems is societal wide corruption or, in other words, our system of governance has failed due to systemic corruption. This is honestly just what happens when hegemonic empires get old and go into decline. Rome was ripe with corruption and monetary debasement as it faded into the pages of history.

it's going into the pockets of 'the people', the working 'proles' who are in a position to steal it.

people suck

Basically that's it. Although I would say it's going into the pockets of the government (entitled) class, petite bourgeois, and the bourgeois.

It's the working proles who end up getting the shaft.

 

[mpd]

Who is winning now? This stock is in full retreat and the investment bankers have abandoned it.