[s]Goal: 100,000 New Goal: 200,000[/s] New Goal: 250.000

[Leyrann]

You can register independent, but then you can't vote in primaries.

 

Having to register to vote is dumb though. Why can't you just, you know, vote without having to align yourself with a political party first?

[Leyrann]

Not in anywhere near the number to impact a federal race, I doubt, but the sort of thing that could sway city councils and school boards and the like.

 

If schools got something to do with politics something is very wrong in your country.

[Leyrann]

 

 

It's Buzz Osborne of Melvins

 

Wasnt he like an "astronaut" or something??!?!?!??!

 

 

I think there was an astronaut named Buzz something?

 

 

Buzz Lightyear Aldrin.

[Leyrann]

 

It has to be a special gift of you americans, to be able to, without error, pick out the dumbest of all three hundred million people living in your country and make that guy your leader.

[Leyrann]

Well that took a while to catch up.

[Leyrann]

Zander and Shad, can you just start spending points already? There's a certain very inactive subboard that requires people to be Asha'man to see it and post there, and I think that you two being Asha'man might actually bring some activity there...

[Shad_]

 

Not in anywhere near the number to impact a federal race, I doubt, but the sort of thing that could sway city councils and school boards and the like.

 

If schools got something to do with politics something is very wrong in your country.

 

We actually had a small victory in the school board race here a month or two ago. The Republicans proposed a plan that would close all of the elementary schools and fire half of the teachers, compress it all into one megaschool with an untenable student-teacher ratio and basically dump a bunch of 5 year olds into something the size of a small college campus. There were no actual complains about the standing elementary school system, but the project was going to cost something to the tune of $42 million and the Republican school board was all getting a slice of that pie.

 

They tried to argue that it could be funded in the long run by money saved firing a lot of teachers, but it wasn't remotely clear how this was ever going to fly with the teachers' union (one of the few things in America still unionized) plus tax payers were going to have to cover the cost up front.  The blow to education didn't really phase anyone on the right, but any time you mention increasing taxes Republicans panic.  So campaigning mostly on the latter issue, we had a bunch of Democrats reregister as Republicans and run for the school board seats on a platform that the standing system was more fiscally conservative.  They won across the board in the primaries, and now a hard right town has a left-leaning school board.

Edited July 10, 2017 by Shad_

[Leyrann]

But whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy is this politically oriented?

[Leyrann]

I mean, yes, the government should obviously fund education, but that should be all. Well, and monitor wheter the education granted is up to the mark.

[Shad_]

The political side of public education is worst when it comes to religion really.  A large segment of the right believes that science is blasphemy against God and should be replaced with a Biblical interpretation of how the world works.  God created the heavens and the earth in seven days somewhere around 4000 BC and the fossil record was part of that design so dinosaurs weren't real, evolution isn't real, and any negative impact humans cause to the environment is God's will because he created it for us to use as we please and destroying it will just speed up the second coming so we can all go live like kings and queens in heaven etc etc.

 

As a consequence, many of them are openly anti-education, in any sort of secular sense, and want to see our public system replaced with for-profit institutes that prioritize Christian fundamentalism.  (You might recall the big fuss about Betsy DeVos becoming secretary of education.  The issue wasn't just that she had zero actual background in public education.  She is a vocal proponent of eliminating free public education for children in favor of a pay-to-learn system that prioritizes Christianity, and she has many many millions of dollars invested into private for-profit schools.)  This has always been an issue on the local level--Republican school boards getting elected on a campaign promise to defund the schools they represent--and in places like Texas it's gotten a lot of state-level backing lately.  (I'm pretty sure Texas public schools are currently required to teach children Biblical creationism, though I don't know if they all comply in practice.)  DeVos is the first time that the idea has received strong federal support.

[Leyrann]

That's like insisting that the world only started to exist when I was born, and you guys were all created with fake memories of before that time.

 

I mean, how hard can it be to accept that a creation that forever improves itself is the most beautiful creation possible??????????????

[Shad_]

I mean, yes, the government should obviously fund education, but that should be all. Well, and monitor wheter the education granted is up to the mark.

 

One of the Republican's largest rallying points is the call to eliminate government funding of education.

 

The idea has two sources of support: corporations interested in creating education monopolies where if you want your kid to learn to read you have to pay for it, and Christians who believe that secular education is fundamentally evil and children should be taught a creationist world view in church schools rather than being taught science.

[Shad_]

That's like insisting that the world only started to exist when I was born, and you guys were all created with fake memories of before that time.

 

I mean, how hard can it be to accept that a creation that forever improves itself is the most beautiful creation possible??????????????

 

Yes but if you interpret an extraordinarily long and subjective book written across many hundreds of years as absolute objective truth, you can make it say whatever you want.   You get to tell yourself you're the chosen one and that everything you believe has divine support and everyone who disagrees with you is inferior in the eyes of the Creator of the universe.

 

It's a pretty powerful message.  I know.  I was raised in one of these for-profit Christian schools.

[Shad_]

There's also a class-based element to it.  On a local level America is extraordinarily gerrymandered.  Where I'm living right now there are two school districts intricately interwoven into the same grid.  The divides are based on the average income of houses on each street, and you can have the luck or misfortune of being a poor person living on a relatively affluent street or vice versa, but basically if you make < x per year you go to school A and if you make > x you go to school B.  Since public schools are heavily funded on the local level, the poor kids get a dilapidated old shack where they can learn to read and not much else and the rich kids get every advanced program you can dream of.  Democrats generally stand behind a platform of redistribution to eliminate income-based public education, and you see a lot of middle class people vote Republican to resist this idea (with tremendous success thus far in our nation's history) because it would mean there schools take a cut and have to admit more poor kids.

[Leyrann]

This truly is a crapsack world...

 

(and I am very happy I do not live in the USA, though I kinda wanna get out of the EU as well)

[Leyrann]

Oh and I see I passed 18k posts.

[Leyrann]

Yay

[Dar'Jen Ab Owain]

Congrats on passing 18,000.

 

That seems so far off for me. But I'm working on it.

[LedZepMan]

We won!!!!!

[Leyrann]

I think I got to 12000 in my first year then needed 5 years to get to 18000...

[Leyrann]

Something like that.

[Leyrann]

We won!!!!!

 

Won what?

[Leyrann]

If you're talking about the loudest lightning strike, I got some bad news for you.

[Leyrann]

There's some really loud ones around here right now.

[LedZepMan]

The Suras Blades 5. My first DPR game we won.