Oh, you want to get rid of the Dept. of Education itself. Well, OK... I don't think that will change much. The Dept. of Education at the federal level doesn't actually do much.

Better control of its funding? Hmm... So, are you speaking for all 50 states? Are you considering that within each state more than half the funding on average comes from local taxes? How exactly do you you think cutting out the federal level is going to make ANY difference to how the states gathers funding from the local districts?

Also, just to note, one of the few things the Dept. of Education does is subsidize the states. So, you already cut your school's budget by 11%.

And how are you going to allow states to compete without a national standard? Even sports teams have to have a league with rules for the competition to mean anything.

Funding must be based on improved performance? Now you're just asking for trouble. Anytime you give a school an incentive like that you run a high risk that that they are going shift the focus from education to test scores. You don't remember that happening under Bush?



Why not suggest it now? Trump might be in jail in 2025.

Well of course you would say something ridiculous like that... You gotta feed your delusions, right? I read through all the assertions Radiance made and they are ALL delusional.

Let me inject some reality for you. From Pew Research...


54% of the women with masters degrees or higher are liberals. Only 24% of them are conservative.

Let's face reality... most conservative women are bimbos who can't read anything more complicated than the instructions on a box of brownie mix.

LOL - I think the Dept. of Education would need to actually HAVE public schools before you can eliminate them. But I'm sure T***p w*n't have a problem pretending to do it anyway.


Public schools are already operating under state governments... they always have. And they are already monitoring their own performances as per Bushes standardized testing under his "No Child Left Behind" program which actually lowered the standards so that ANYONE can score high and "No Child" will be "Left Behind". As a result of this "great idea", students are now being taught how to pass tests to make schools look better instead of actually learning anything.

I think the best thing we can do for education in America is to keep the half-witted lunatics on the right, out of it.

LOL - You have no idea the stereotype you are enforcing. To free thinkers like myself it's pretty obvious when people prefer to let others do the thinking for them... One dead give away is calling a single source a "go-to" for information. Also, I'm curious as to why you had to emphasize that he's black. Do you think that makes any difference to me?


That's not what thousands of court rulings say. ;)

Look, I don't see things in black and white like you do... I know that for the most part, Fortune 500 companies run an honest business, but there ARE exceptions and they usually have more to do with specific individuals employed by these companies.


Why would i have a problem with that?

Wait... you think I'm a c*******t, don't you? LOL - that's funny. You're all ready to b***h-slap a c****e. It must be so frustrating that you can't actually find any.


Any i***t can write a book, Sparky. But I'll have a look... the title refers to a big concern in global trade these days. It's possible that Jim Richard is presenting legitimate arguments but you're not understanding them.

The "handful of monopolies tied to galloping globalism are anything BUT socialists. A common reference to the most powerful g*******ts over the last 70 years are neoliberals and their most effective weapon is free-market capitalism. The IMF, the World Bank and the G7 are all assemblies of authority over this world order.

Don't be confused by the fact that so many Democrats support this world order. I know that probably clashes with your dogmatic believe that all Democrats are socialists, but they are not. Most mainstream Democrats are free-market capitalists with significant investments in Wall Street.

You also seem to think there is more than one central bank printing money, but that is actually false. There is only one central bank printing money out of thin air and that's the Federal Reserve. All other countries base their currency on the dollar, which has been the worlds reserve currency since Bretton Woods.


Actually, individuals pay the most taxes to the tune of about 50%. Corporate taxes are at about 4% and that includes small business, such as limited liability companies (LLC) and s-corporations. I'm not sure of how much of that 4% is coming from small business vs big business, but I know that small businesses rarely have the money to pay for legal teams to find ways to avoid paying taxes like Fortune 500 companies do.

It sounds like you're hearing a lot of things but you're just having a hard time putting it together. I would say not to worry, it takes time to figure all this out but it's not going to happen if you allow your prejudices and emotional outrage to block your understanding.

OK Sparky... Obviously, you have no interest in the reality of the situation or even the fundamentals of government so there's no point in explaining it to you. You want to be screaming moron? Fine.


Centralized planning is what ALL governments do, genius. Ya gonna bark at the Pentagon for centralized planning of defense spending? The entire purpose of a government is centralized planning. If you're too simple to handle the shades of gray I guess everything will appear to you in black and white absolutes. I'm sure none of it will confuse you as long as you keep allowing your masters to do all your thinking for you. You're a good boy.


I would prefer that morons leave all the decisions to more capable people.


Oh, because you know me that well


You must be confused. I never said anything about corporations not hiring me. I was referring to departments being resistant to corporate practices. That's an observation from me as an architect working directly under a companies CTO... Probably not something you would understand.


Same here... I'm guessing they paid me more, because you're telegraphing way too much stupidity for me to believe a corporation would ever trust you to make decisions. But I'm glad your career as a maintenance worker was rewarding.

You don't believe we have robots or you don't believe Democrats are trying make higher education more accessible to American students?

Ya know, CounterRevolutionary really put the limelight on a sentiment I often hear from the right when he said Rockefeller and his schools accomplished more by teaching the 3Rs than those Democrats did with Common Core. The 3Rs are the building blocks for the most basic drone in the workforce. That's what Rockefeller said he wanted... workers, not thinkers. He wanted basic drones who can at least read their schedules and timecard and be able to do basic arithmetic so they know where to cut, rivet, sew or where to dig.

This conservative need to revert to the past is a dangerous idea because we aren't *in* the past. Yes, we DO have robots now. Robots that can do anything Rockefeller wanted his workers to do. So we aren't helping our children by limiting their potential to the level of a household appliance.

Common Core is probably a failure as far as implementations go, but it's not surprising given the fact that it's a federal initiative trying to govern something that has always been governed by the states.

I still think the premise is good. I think we should have a national standard. Or even a federated standard to match our federal system... In this case, the whole point of common core being to make it common to the whole, keep the "common" part minimal. Then allow each state to fill in according to their own legislation.

I would agree that neither side of the Darwin vs Bible standoff would need to be in a common core so we can shelve that argument and let the states decide.

Since you took the blue pill, Scooter. ;)

Nothing I've cited in that post is a farce and I don't know what your second sentence has to do with anything but I happen to agree. Our founders were indeed, liberals... and seeking liberty is what liberals do.


I see where you're going with this... Just so you know, *I* wasn't seeking anything. I was merely challenging Eagle's assertion that the liberal takeover of public education is one the the so-called "planks" of the C*******t Manifesto. But now that I proven his assertion to be in error, I can move on to your argument.

First of all... I'm not a c*******t. If anything, I am a geolibertarian but I really don't spend a lot of time getting caught up in fluffy ideology.

I am a first-hand witness to the influx of foreign professionals taking highly-paid jobs in our STEM-based industries and I am watching this influx create waves of gentrification in cities like San Francisco, where US citizens with inferior education are winding up on the streets.

This is the reality... It's not a complicated one. Right-wing media MAKES it nebulous, where it appears too complex to understand other than pointing out that the city is run by Democrats and so it becomes a bullet item on the list of rants.

But the only fault in the scenario I described is that the immigrants are getting more help to qualify for those jobs than the citizens are... Not because our government is giving it to them, but because our government is denying its own citizens the help that the immigrants are already getting from the countries they come from.

So, it makes sense to compare these relevant systems rather than subjective opinions about 19th century philosophy.

Why do these immigrants have such an advantage in our STEM-based job-markets?
Because most of them come from countries that provide their people with better education.

The primary reason for that is public funding... we also fund our schools but we're stingy about it. As a consequence, we have underpaid teachers overwhelmed by oversized student bodies. It gets worse at the college level to where students typically have to pay for tuition and that makes it unavailable to many. To make matters worse, we play around with dumb moves like privatization, where we use vouchers to siphon public funding off to private charter schools that are constantly failing.

Here's a little clue from an advocate of the hybrid economy... If it's important but not profitable, don't f_cking privatize it! Capitalism is about profit. If there is no profit, it will fail but if it's important enough... like education or healthcare then socialism and centralized planning is a better option.

Use the right tools for the job and stop getting all caught up in fluffy Marxist BS. Every developed nation on Earth, including our own is using a hybrid economy of capitalism AND socialism. So get over it.

The only reason why you keep getting brainwashed with all this anti-Marxist crap is because there are s**msters out there looking for ways to make a profit from charging consumers for human-critical things such as staying alive. If these services are already provided as a benefit of being an American, they know they have to privatize it first. THEN they can start the billing.


Excellent example! Rockefeller, who actually created the first public school system in America did not do that to benefit the freed s***es or anyone else. He did it to provide his company with workers. This did provide the students with an advantage as a trickle-down effect, so well-done, but he was also very clear that he had no interest in making the students anything more capable when he said “I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nations of workers.”

So his schools may have achieved more, teaching the "3Rs", than those Democrats when it comes to making robots out of them. But we have actual robots for that now and what the Democrats are trying to so is make it possible for student to actually learn how to be thinkers.


The abolitionists were diametrically opposed to the founding fathers, most of whom were s***e owners. The liberty that the founders of this republic fought for was the liberty to keep s***es in the face of abolitionism that was already rampant in England at the time. This is why the Republican Party was established. They were liberals flipping a middle-finger to the conservatives in the Democratic Party trying to uphold s***ery just like the founders did a century before.

As for the imaginary "4th Reich" the ONLY people I ever see brandishing N**i symbols and slogans are on the right. How confusing life must be for you.


LOL - I read that book 20 years ago and was surprised to see how popular it got considering the obvious BS.

Jonah Goldberg meticulously picked apart the N**i party in an effort to connect dots to the American Left, while ignoring some very basic facts...

1. Nationalist socialism and democratic socialism are NOT the same thing. The N**is were national socialists and one of their first orders of business was to execute all the leaders of the democratic socialist parties.

2. The socialist aspect of the N**i party was not extraordinary by any means. It was a mere component in the bigger system which was still driven mostly by capitalism. Not that different than the socialist component of the American system that FDR was building at the time.

3. What WAS extraordinary about the N**is was their ethnic cleansing, which the U.S. stopped doing after the Indian Removal Act. This is what the N**is are famous for, exterminating Jews. That puts them on the right by definition. Right = exclusion of others, Left = include everyone.

You will find every dictionary, encyclopedia, college, international journal, economist, newsfloor, think tank and government referring to groups based on this dichotomy, with the only differences of opinion coming from crackpots and contrarians like Jonas Goldberg.

You are emphasizing what I consider to be the worst character of the right... The weak and submissive need for a knight in shining armor to do everything for them.

I always think of Obama's slogan "Yes WE Can!" and how it appeals to his base of people who consider themselves to be part of the solution. Then I contrast that with Trump's constant self-praising statements like "I alone can fix this!" and how that appeals to his base of people, conditioned all their lives to think they need superior beings to save them from themselves.

SO beta.

This type of fallacy is called a "false dilemma". Where mutual exclusivity is implied but not real. You are implying we have to choose between moral values and secular principals because they can not co-exist. But that is effectively a lie.

Secularism DOES co-exist with moral values. Just because secularism doesn't allow the church to run the government doesn't mean it's stopping it from guiding citizens in their personal lives. In fact secularism actually protects religious freedom because it allows people to to choose wh**ever religion they want to participate in.

This is why secularism was guaranteed by our Founders with the 1st Amendment... BECAUSE they were trying to avoid the situation in England where people were forced to comply with the Church of England and not a denomination of their own choosing.

Those pushing for an end to secularism are pushing for a return to the dark-ages where theocratic governments controlled the moral codes that everyone was forced to obey. There are examples of this today as well, such as Iran which actually has a moral police force that puts people in prison not obeying dress codes.

Is that what you want?

Are you seriously blaming the Dept. of Education for what students are interested in studying? In most other developed countries science isn't vilified for being a threat to religion like it is here. Maybe THAT something to do with it.


That's complete BS.


I also finished high school in the 70's and I remember the standards even then being much lower than in England where my cousins went to school... same age but always two or three years ahead in their studies. They could even recite all the capitals of all the states in the U.S. whereas some of the American kids I was going to school with couldn't even find their own country on a world map. That WAS the 70's!

Ya know why my family immigrated to the U.S.? Because the aerospace industry needed engineers and they had to find them in Europe because there was a shortage of American talent. Why? Because the education system in America sucked even then and THAT was in 1963!

So you're trying to feed BS to the wrong person, Smedly.

Education in the U.S. has ALWAYS scored low on the global scale because it has always been a low priority and the influx of better educated immigrants into the U.S. job market didn't start with Carter. It was ALWAYS an issue.

Here's my theory, if you're not too insulted to read it.

First of all, America has always been business-driven, going all the way back to colonial days when many of the colonies themselves were in fact corporate assets. Secondly, not all students going to college actually graduate. Last I looked, the rate was about 60%.

So, from a business perspective, it doesn't make as much sense to pay more tax for a domestic education system that will give industry a 60% return on the investment as it does to cut that tax and just hire qualified talent produced by other countries on their dime.

This sucks for American students, but capitalism has never been about the people, it's always about the dollar.


That depends on what you DO with the money. Just putting gas in the tank isn't going to make your car go either, you have to actually turn the engine on and drive it, but without that gas it ain't gonna happen.

One thing is certain, defunding education isn't a solution either. In fact, it does make the situation worse and this is just what conservatives have been doing since the 70s.

For instance, Trump proposed a 13.5% cut to education in his 2018 budget. That's par for the Republican course but the conservative war on education isn't limited to budget cuts. For example, there is the infamous voucher introduced by the Bush Administration. The voucher allows for taxes earmarked for public education to be siphoned off to privately owned and operated charter schools that happen to have a high rate of failure.


...Especially when education standards are already low. And yet, this is just what Bush and his conservatives did when they started to push for standardized testing under his "No Child Left Behind" campaign. Conservatives suddenly thought they could cut funding for actual education if they could just f**e it with impressive test scores and so they dropped the standards so that even the slowest kids can "make the grade".

Well, that has absolutely nothing to do with what I said about your accusations but maybe you were biting off more than you can chew. I often see baseless accusations about "liberals" and when I question them, it's pretty common for the accuser to back off and resort to wide sweeping generalizations.

But there's an interesting conversation to be had here, given what you said.

You emphasize a need for an anchor that takes a more "substantial" form than what is merely man's ideologies. I'm not sure how our Constitution qualifies in that respect. The Constitution is literally a set of rules for creating and limiting a government.

For a culture that emphasizes a small government, it seems odd how it also seems to insist that the government should be a throne for such expansive authority over our lives.

I prefer the idea of keeping the government focused on statutory issues and letting communities guide their own flocks in their own way.

I think you're right for the most part. Not so sure about the full power of the U.S. military being used for that purpose - it would be a little bit overk**l for the mere 538 v**ers that decides our e******ns for us. ;)

I think the problem is that some people are so brainwashed by their puppet masters they are unable to see any substance in liberal arguments because they're too busy screaming at them to pay any attention to what they are actually saying.


What's wrong with pointing out the flaws of ANY system? Are we not allowed to be critical?

Look, it makes sense for one to be more concerned about systems that he is affected by. As Americans, we are not affected by c*******m. We are not a c*******t country. We are primarily capitalist so, it makes sense to be critical about capitalism. That's just being smart.

As for the decades of historical facts... I'm pretty certain you are referring to the horrors of Soviet and Sino "C*******m" but there is no parallel between those horrors and the theory of c*******m itself. What you are saying is no different than saying we need to ban guns because they've been used murder people, therefore guns murder people. Seriously, that's how ridiculous it is.

Personally, I don't think c*******m would work in America, so I'm not an advocate. For one, we Americans struggle too much with our selfishness. Marx was pretty clear about c*******m being an evolutionary thing and we are not even close to being evolved enough to implement ANY system that depends on our sense of justice.


OK, so here's the glaring gap that for some weird reason you folks never see. Yes, the "Invisible Hand" as Adam Smith called it, is the self-regulating property of a free market but the fact is, a LOT of people can suffer in the meantime.

Weather is also a self-regulating system and yet people die from floods and hurricanes while the planet regulates itself. What you are saying about self-regulated capitalism is no less ridiculous than telling people not to concern themselves with the approaching hurricane because next week there will be blue skies again.

Actually, I'm laughing my ass off. 1963 was the height of McCarthyism which has long been exposed as a propaganda campaign. For people like you, it's ALWAYS a matter of subscription. Which source will you believe? But for people like me, it's about analysis and the process of deciding for ourselves.

Reading the manifesto literally, there is nothing nefarious about the tenth measure. In 1848 when it was published, children WERE abused. Unless they were from a privileged family, they did not go to school, they worked in factories and on the fields instead where they stayed illiterate and controlled for duration of their short wretched lives. A lot of people were eager to put an end to that.

And reading the 45 "c*******t goals" according to people who feared the threat of social progress, it's exactly as I would expect. A list of exaggerations, misrepresentations and conspiracy theories about the progressive movement designed to help persecute it's activists.

I can't believe people are STILL stupid enough to be misled by it.