I suspect, given recent news articles, that we already know that the 28% that drop completely out of Tech will consist largely of AA males, but it would be interesting to see the stats.

I’ve also heard a lot about the two parallel schools, but mostly from the ‘Paideia or bust’ crowd. I have also heard that a good education can be gotten from the non-Paideia track. I’d like to hear from the families who did not choose Paideia or Engineering about their experience at Tech. Further, I’d like to see how many general Tech (non-Paideia) students go on to college and where.

Good children don’t want to sit in a classroom with bad children. Are you ready to make them?

The Charter Schools are now the future of CA Education, for better or worse. And as far as the public school employees – they are done for.

This is why I never respond to you any more, Nextset — but I forgot my own rule.

We are talking about children.

If people want protection and education they can join a church/cult/union/frat – or something similar. The state governments can have the public schooling they want to offer it (not required in federal constitution). They can’t require participation (you can opt out for private education). There is no constitutional authority at all for the federal government to run education (and congress cannot properly invent new power for themselves).

I’m not advocating complete laissez-faire. I do believe the states have power they aren’t using yet. I just don’t believe the states are in position to impose totalitarianism, or cradle to grave provisions for people.

We don’t speak the same language.

Nowhere, fyi, did I call for welfare.

I don’t want to live in a gated community, nor a police state. These are not the only options. You seem to believe they are.

I have been lived in many other countries, and believe me, the choice is not a dichotomy between socialism and laissez-faire. There are sophistical solutions to complex problems, if you have the will as a society to tackle them.

As I’ve said before, this isn’t Israel. We don’t do that village and children thing.

The treasury – the taxpayers – have no duty and no business raising children not taken from parents and living in state orphanages/jails.

The little bastards (sure they were…) who attacked you and your children’s public school did so because they are bad children of bad people who are not controlled or disciplined – mainly because our weak and decadent CA society has relaxed law and order (and moral and economic) controls that worked so well previously. Believe me, that’s easy to fix.

You may think the answer to this kind of criminality is to increase welfare payments and transfers – you are wrong. You think wrongly. That has never been the correct answer across human history. Appeasement of evil only gets you more of the same. People acting badly need to starve, sicken & die and that goes for any children they are allowed to retain. As harsh as that sounds it is our fundamental protection from the roving bands of human animals we engender with the indiscriminate feedings. Unless you like police states.

As far as managing the economy, We do need to make fundamental change – not in your direction. I rather think other changes are more prudent. I do believe we can and should increase job creation. Does that mean I’m for tariffs? Maybe and maybe not. You can be sure that Obambi and his party and not what I have in mind. I’m not for giving the republicans a blank check because they are also statists in favor or large centralized government. Clearly I would free a lot of people from their freedom to do as they please and not pay the true price of their behavior.

To sum it up, it’s never “practical” to pay off parasites. You get more parasites that way.

I believe I am the pragmatist. I want to help poor people have excellent free childcare because it is not only the moral thing to do, but also because it is the PRACTICAL thing to do if I want to live in a low-crime, low-tension society.

Everything I own of value was robbed last year by a group of Oakland teenagers. My children’s public school is tormented by children who are angry, uneducated, abused and abusive.

Hurt people hurt people.

As for jobs, I didn’t say the government should provide them. I am not an economist. I just know that if we are to create the kind of community I’d like to live in, folks have to have jobs that provide both esteem and financial stability.

Sadly, it seems we are headed to a world where, having moved our “union aristocracy” jobs in manufacturing offshore and replacing them with a bloated, consumerism based service sector, we aren’t really serious about providing anything more than low-paid clerk jobs at Walgreens’ for those who are, in the true, original sense of the word, ghettoized.

We have much work to do.