Time to get on the TRUMP train

[The_Lurker]

This is the type of thing I was talking about earlier.

Democrats like Mr. Wikler above are taking a fact (the elimination of the deduction of state and local taxes paid from your federal tax liability) and twisting it into an insidious plot to destroy public education.



First off, I want to say that I do NOT support the elimination of this deduction. I think that's an awful idea, for many reasons -- not the least of which being the concept of double taxation.

However, this is not a "war" on public education, and in fact the schools will still be collecting the same amount of tax money that they were before. This actually hurts the taxpaying individual, as he ends up with a higher tax bill.

I've heard the dumb argument as to how this can negatively affect the schools. It goes like this:

- School district runs out of money

- School district says, "Hey, let's propose a new tax in order to get more funding", and it gets put on the ballot

- Whereas before when people would vote YES on the new tax because they'd get part of it back via a federal deduction, now they will vote NO on the new tax because they don't get that anymore

- Ballot measure loses, whereas before it would have won

- Schools remain broke, kids have to sit on the floor because the schools can't afford desks anymore, students sit in 30 degree classrooms because schools can't pay the heating bill, and the textbooks are all from 1944 because the schools can't afford new ones. OMG OMG OMG OMG

But that's not reality.

The truth is that public schools have been playing fast and loose with tax increases for a long time, choosing to pass the burden onto taxpayers, rather than look at their own over-compartmentalized budgets full of waste.

If this tax change makes it a bit harder for schools to ramrod tax increases down the public's throat via "what about the children?" scare tactics, then that's the one good thing that came out of it.

Also, I'm not sure if anyone thinks, "Oh, I have a federal deduction for local taxes, so I'll vote yes" when deciding to vote to approve a tax increase. Typically people are either for it ("sure, it's for a good cause") or against it ("let the school district budget better instead of reaching into my wallet"), and I doubt this new tax plan will change people's voting habits much, regarding local taxes.


But let's even concede here that it will, as the left is claiming.

That still isn't defunding public schools. It would just be making it more difficult for them to grab ADDITIONAL funding beyond what they already have.

The tax break for private schools is a totally separate matter, and Mr. Wikler is misleadingly connecting the two.

I have mixed feelings about private school tax breaks, but that's another subject for another time.

Bottom line is that, while I agree that this change was stupid and needs to be reversed, it's not the attack on schools that the left wants you to believe it is.

This is a prime example of taking something actually bad (the removal of the state/local taxes paid deduction) and instead of reporting on it honestly, falsely claiming it's something much worse.

It is wrong for people to frame the narrative to bolster their argument.

[El Gallo]

This is the type of thing I was talking about earlier.

Democrats like Mr. Wikler above are taking a fact (the elimination of the deduction of state and local taxes paid from your federal tax liability) and twisting it into an insidious plot to destroy public education.



First off, I want to say that I do NOT support the elimination of this deduction. I think that's an awful idea, for many reasons -- not the least of which being the concept of double taxation.

However, this is not a "war" on public education, and in fact the schools will still be collecting the same amount of tax money that they were before. This actually hurts the taxpaying individual, as he ends up with a higher tax bill.

I've heard the dumb argument as to how this can negatively affect the schools. It goes like this:

- School district runs out of money

- School district says, "Hey, let's propose a new tax in order to get more funding", and it gets put on the ballot

- Whereas before when people would vote YES on the new tax because they'd get part of it back via a federal deduction, now they will vote NO on the new tax because they don't get that anymore

- Ballot measure loses, whereas before it would have won

- Schools remain broke, kids have to sit on the floor because the schools can't afford desks anymore, students sit in 30 degree classrooms because schools can't pay the heating bill, and the textbooks are all from 1944 because the schools can't afford new ones. OMG OMG OMG OMG

But that's not reality.

The truth is that public schools have been playing fast and loose with tax increases for a long time, choosing to pass the burden onto taxpayers, rather than look at their own over-compartmentalized budgets full of waste.

If this tax change makes it a bit harder for schools to ramrod tax increases down the public's throat via "what about the children?" scare tactics, then that's the one good thing that came out of it.

Also, I'm not sure if anyone thinks, "Oh, I have a federal deduction for local taxes, so I'll vote yes" when deciding to vote to approve a tax increase. Typically people are either for it ("sure, it's for a good cause") or against it ("let the school district budget better instead of reaching into my wallet"), and I doubt this new tax plan will change people's voting habits much, regarding local taxes.


But let's even concede here that it will, as the left is claiming.

That still isn't defunding public schools. It would just be making it more difficult for them to grab ADDITIONAL funding beyond what they already have.

The tax break for private schools is a totally separate matter, and Mr. Wikler is misleadingly connecting the two.

I have mixed feelings about private school tax breaks, but that's another subject for another time.

Bottom line is that, while I agree that this change was stupid and needs to be reversed, it's not the attack on schools that the left wants you to believe it is.

This is a prime example of taking something actually bad (the removal of the state/local taxes paid deduction) and instead of reporting on it honestly, falsely claiming it's something much worse.

Most public schools are not playing fast and loose with their budgets. In most cases (especially in low income neighborhoods) they are grossly underfunded and teachers spend their own money to buy supplies; which they used to be able to deduct and won’t be able to now.

My family works with a lot of inner city schools to help children and our foundation has given millions to help public and private school systems. It is a topic I am intimately aware of and I can tell you that your comment about them playing fast and loose with tax payer money is a slap in the face to some amazing people who do amazing work trying to make a school function with severe under budgeting constraints.

The vast majority are amazing people. Much like you believe it is wrong to vilify cops for a few bad apples it is very wrong to vilify public schools because a few took advantage.

You are wrong on this topic and honestly feel angry because I know the people who try and do a lot with very little in the school system.

[BCR]

Most public schools are not playing fast and loose with their budgets. In most cases (especially in low income neighborhoods) they are grossly underfunded and teachers spend their own money to buy supplies; which they used to be able to deduct and won’t be able to now.

Honestly, this is bad policy and bad politics. I had a buddy who taught for a decade in the 89123 zip of Las Vegas, which is predominantly white and middle class from what I could tell, and he used to have to buy supplies out of a salary which was in the $27-$34k range.

I’ve never really seen a wasteful inner city school. They run on shoestring budgets and have antiquated everything. There may be a corrupt individual administrator here or there who abuses some state grant, but I’ve never seen a systemic issue where multiple officials were getting rich off waste.

Most of the solid public schools are affluent white suburbs. Here in the rust belt, I’ve seen a lot of waste in districts that are solidly middle class and upper middle-class. Most of the waste is a failure to scale back on their staff spending despite the population flight. I graduated with close to 800 kids. A typical class now may be high 300s or 400. They’ve kept the same amount of staff through the years and only lessened their staff through attrition upon retirement. They’ve also continued to build and invest in a manner not commensurate with their number of students and trajectory of the locality.

That said, they’ve did it though local levies and state money. That’s where this is also bad politics in the Midwest as the schools I deem as a bit wasteful are disproportionately areas where Trump won heavily.

He’s made a lot of these types of decisions during his short presidency. Decisions that on the surface he thinks aren’t news grabbers, and will please his donors and go by unnoticed, but truly impact a large number of people in a negative manner. His supporters will forgive him a lot, but a thing like this hits his soft support particularly hard. These are the suburbs that went Trump reluctantly after a Jeb or Rubio failed. They prefer him to a Democrat, but it isn’t a love affair. This isn’t Medicaid cuts which would have directly impacted his hard support.

[MumblesBadly]

Most public schools are not playing fast and loose with their budgets. In most cases (especially in low income neighborhoods) they are grossly underfunded and teachers spend their own money to buy supplies; which they used to be able to deduct and won’t be able to now.

Honestly, this is bad policy and bad politics. I had a buddy who taught for a decade in the 89123 zip of Las Vegas, which is predominantly white and middle class from what I could tell, and he used to have to buy supplies out of a salary which was in the $27-$34k range.

I’ve never really seen a wasteful inner city school. They run on shoestring budgets and have antiquated everything. There may be a corrupt individual administrator here or there who abuses some state grant, but I’ve never seen a systemic issue where multiple officials were getting rich off waste.

Most of the solid public schools are affluent white suburbs. Here in the rust belt, I’ve seen a lot of waste in districts that are solidly middle class and upper middle-class. Most of the waste is a failure to scale back on their staff spending despite the population flight. I graduated with close to 800 kids. A typical class now may be high 300s or 400. They’ve kept the same amount of staff through the years and only lessened their staff through attrition upon retirement. They’ve also continued to build and invest in a manner not commensurate with their number of students and trajectory of the locality.

That said, they’ve did it though local levies and state money. That’s where this is also bad politics in the Midwest as the schools I deem as a bit wasteful are disproportionately areas where Trump won heavily.

He’s made a lot of these types of decisions during his short presidency. Decisions that on the surface he thinks aren’t news grabbers, and will please his donors and go by unnoticed, but truly impact a large number of people in a negative manner. His supporters will forgive him a lot, but a thing like this hits his soft support particularly hard. These are the suburbs that went Trump reluctantly after a Jeb or Rubio failed. They prefer him to a Democrat, but it isn’t a love affair. This isn’t Medicaid cuts which would have directly impacted his hard support.

Re how wasteful public schools are: My impression, having shopped for housing in four different states, the answer is "It depends on the state.

For example, Delaware property taxes, including those for public schools, are about 1/3 of what you would pay for a similar valued house in a similar neighborhood in New Jersey. And a huge part of the difference is that there are about 15-20 times more school districts in New Jersey versus Delaware per capita. And each of the school districts in New Jersey has its own set of administrators. And New Jersey public schools typically are bloated with specialist teacher support personnel included in administration who get typicaly earn more than front line teachers given that they are credentiated with advanced degrees and/or training beyond the standard teaching degree.

To illustrate how wasteful the public school system in New Jersey is, consider that Corzine's admininistration developed a plan to induce the public K-12 school districts to consolidate into larger and leaner-per-capita districts with total tax breaks amounting to about $1 billion across all the districts versus the then-extant school tax pass-through obligations to the state. And if all the school districts got on board with this plan, the spending on public schools was estimated to fall over each year by several billion dollars, with some estimates as high as $5 billion. Guess how many school districts got on board with that plan?

[BCR]

Yeah, I wasn’t saying they aren’t wasteful. Around me, they often are. I was just saying there’s a tendency to view public schools=inner city, as that’s the case in many metropolitan areas. I only said I don’t see a lot
of waste in the inner city schools. I doubt you were home shopping in the ghetto. I see corruption, but not systemic waste in inner city schools. The money isn’t there to steal.

The teachers are pretty often people who view it as a calling rather than a lucrative career choice. You’ll get a rogue administrator here or here, and often bad results for even the meager investment because of how detached the parents are, but they’re never overfunded in the hood. Plus those parents are rarely paying taxes. Removing the deduction is going to be pretty polarized to districts that voted R. I imagine they’ll first blame Trump, because it will be different than the previous tax preparation has been for years, and then they’ll start voting down levies and addressing the problem of overspending in the burbs and run a tighter ship.

[vegas1369]

UH-OH DONNIE!!!!

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN1DZ0XN

[MumblesBadly]

This is the type of thing I was talking about earlier.

Democrats like Mr. Wikler above are taking a fact (the elimination of the deduction of state and local taxes paid from your federal tax liability) and twisting it into an insidious plot to destroy public education.



First off, I want to say that I do NOT support the elimination of this deduction. I think that's an awful idea, for many reasons -- not the least of which being the concept of double taxation.

However, this is not a "war" on public education, and in fact the schools will still be collecting the same amount of tax money that they were before. This actually hurts the taxpaying individual, as he ends up with a higher tax bill.

...

Also, I'm not sure if anyone thinks, "Oh, I have a federal deduction for local taxes, so I'll vote yes" when deciding to vote to approve a tax increase. Typically people are either for it ("sure, it's for a good cause") or against it ("let the school district budget better instead of reaching into my wallet"), and I doubt this new tax plan will change people's voting habits much, regarding local taxes.
...

As PFA's unofficial resident economist, I agree with the first bolded statement indicated above. But as someone who has paid outrageous New Jersey property taxes, and also shopped for housing in much-lower-property taxed Delaware, *net* cost of property taxation--meaning, after the applicable federal income tax deduction--figures into how much the market will support home prices. All else equal, a higher *net* cost of property taxes reduces the market value of homes.

That's why middle class housing in New Jersey that I looked at when in the market was priced at about 80% of a comparable property in in a comparable neighborhood in Delaware, which has *much* lower property taxes. Eliminating the federal deductibility of property taxes is only going to make this tax effect on home market prices worse for residence of higher-property-tax states like New Jersey.

And because blue states tend to have higher higher property taxes than blue states, middle class homeowners in those states will experience on average a higher one-time hit to the market value of their primary residences, and this their net worth, than homeowners in red states if they lose that federal deduction.

[Dan Druff]

This is the type of thing I was talking about earlier.

Democrats like Mr. Wikler above are taking a fact (the elimination of the deduction of state and local taxes paid from your federal tax liability) and twisting it into an insidious plot to destroy public education.



First off, I want to say that I do NOT support the elimination of this deduction. I think that's an awful idea, for many reasons -- not the least of which being the concept of double taxation.

However, this is not a "war" on public education, and in fact the schools will still be collecting the same amount of tax money that they were before. This actually hurts the taxpaying individual, as he ends up with a higher tax bill.

I've heard the dumb argument as to how this can negatively affect the schools. It goes like this:

- School district runs out of money

- School district says, "Hey, let's propose a new tax in order to get more funding", and it gets put on the ballot

- Whereas before when people would vote YES on the new tax because they'd get part of it back via a federal deduction, now they will vote NO on the new tax because they don't get that anymore

- Ballot measure loses, whereas before it would have won

- Schools remain broke, kids have to sit on the floor because the schools can't afford desks anymore, students sit in 30 degree classrooms because schools can't pay the heating bill, and the textbooks are all from 1944 because the schools can't afford new ones. OMG OMG OMG OMG

But that's not reality.

The truth is that public schools have been playing fast and loose with tax increases for a long time, choosing to pass the burden onto taxpayers, rather than look at their own over-compartmentalized budgets full of waste.

If this tax change makes it a bit harder for schools to ramrod tax increases down the public's throat via "what about the children?" scare tactics, then that's the one good thing that came out of it.

Also, I'm not sure if anyone thinks, "Oh, I have a federal deduction for local taxes, so I'll vote yes" when deciding to vote to approve a tax increase. Typically people are either for it ("sure, it's for a good cause") or against it ("let the school district budget better instead of reaching into my wallet"), and I doubt this new tax plan will change people's voting habits much, regarding local taxes.


But let's even concede here that it will, as the left is claiming.

That still isn't defunding public schools. It would just be making it more difficult for them to grab ADDITIONAL funding beyond what they already have.

The tax break for private schools is a totally separate matter, and Mr. Wikler is misleadingly connecting the two.

I have mixed feelings about private school tax breaks, but that's another subject for another time.

Bottom line is that, while I agree that this change was stupid and needs to be reversed, it's not the attack on schools that the left wants you to believe it is.

This is a prime example of taking something actually bad (the removal of the state/local taxes paid deduction) and instead of reporting on it honestly, falsely claiming it's something much worse.

Most public schools are not playing fast and loose with their budgets. In most cases (especially in low income neighborhoods) they are grossly underfunded and teachers spend their own money to buy supplies; which they used to be able to deduct and won’t be able to now.

My family works with a lot of inner city schools to help children and our foundation has given millions to help public and private school systems. It is a topic I am intimately aware of and I can tell you that your comment about them playing fast and loose with tax payer money is a slap in the face to some amazing people who do amazing work trying to make a school function with severe under budgeting constraints.

The vast majority are amazing people. Much like you believe it is wrong to vilify cops for a few bad apples it is very wrong to vilify public schools because a few took advantage.

You are wrong on this topic and honestly feel angry because I know the people who try and do a lot with very little in the school system.

Teachers do have to buy supplies with their own money. That's exactly the type of problem I'm talking about, but you responded in knee-jerk fashion to my criticism without reading the part that my main complaint was an over-compartmentalization of budgeting.

Public schools spend way too much in some areas and way too little in others. This often leaves them nonsensically cash-strapped in critical areas, while money gets wasted elsewhere.

This problem also exists at public colleges.

It is incredibly frustrating, and it's often difficult or impossible to get budgets reassigned or shifted, because each little department fights tooth and nail to keep its money. Public schools act as a sum of individual little parts, rather than one entity. (Interestingly, Caesars also suffers from this problem.)

There are also inner-city schools which are completely under-funded, but that's a different matter entirely. Often that's a matter of high population density (lots of students) and not enough local revenue from property taxes to support them. It varies from state to state, but that's not what I'm referring to here. It's a great go-to argument ("What about those suffering inner city schools, huh?? Huh??") whenever conservatives dare bring up the fact that many schools are overfunded and/or not spending wisely. But again, that's a matter the state is supposed to take care of, and I am referring to local tax increases which are voted upon to benefit only the local districts. In most of those cases, YES, the school district is playing fast and loose with tax money, though again, through their own incompetence many things still remain underfunded.

I've always said that each teacher should be given an annual expense account of some sort for $500 or so to buy classroom supplies. That's a drop in the bucket for most school districts, but would give them some discretionary spending power for the classroom. Instead, getting any classroom supplies requires a mountain of bureaucracy (or in many cases, is imposssible), so teachers spend out of their own pockets. Oddly enough, the left uses this as a talking point as to why schools need more money, rather than looking at the situation honestly and realizing that this is a resource management issue, and not a budgetary issue.

Good job getting green-repped by all of the PFA leftists who post in this thread, though.

The difference here is that I want the schools properly funded AND budgeted correctly, and you seem to want to just keep reaching into the pockets of the taxpayer to take more money whenever the schools ask for it.

[Dan Druff]

Yeah, I wasn’t saying they aren’t wasteful. Around me, they often are. I was just saying there’s a tendency to view public schools=inner city, as that’s the case in many metropolitan areas. I only said I don’t see a lot
of waste in the inner city schools. I doubt you were home shopping in the ghetto. I see corruption, but not systemic waste in inner city schools. The money isn’t there to steal.

The teachers are pretty often people who view it as a calling rather than a lucrative career choice. You’ll get a rogue administrator here or here, and often bad results for even the meager investment because of how detached the parents are, but they’re never overfunded in the hood. Plus those parents are rarely paying taxes. Removing the deduction is going to be pretty polarized to districts that voted R. I imagine they’ll first blame Trump, because it will be different than the previous tax preparation has been for years, and then they’ll start voting down levies and addressing the problem of overspending in the burbs and run a tighter ship.

I agree with this.

However, as I said in my other post, the underfunded school tends to be an inner-city phenomenon, but the left likes to portray it as the typical case, thus making Republicans look evil whenever they oppose taxes which fund schools.

I have a buddy whose kids go to a public school in a district in a wealthy neighborhood. He told me a story which is so typical of California public schools.

His kids complained to him that they were waiting on 25 minute lines to get lunch. This was a new problem -- the kids said the lines were reasonable the prior year.

Anyway, he looked into it, and the whole issue was occurring because they promoted a single 4-hour-per-day cafeteria employee to another position, and the head of cafeteria services at the district decided to save money by not replacing her and just telling everyone else to work harder (lol). Presumably this was because she wanted to either reallocate the money saved or just so she could look good to superiors by claiming to have achieved more efficiency.

Getting this fixed was a huge task. My friend complained to the district and was basically told to eat shit. He went to the school board, and was again told to eat shit. Then he took matters into his own hands, took pictures of the lines snaking all around the campus, and went back to the school board. He threatened to e-mail these pictures to the companies donating $ to the school (which were owned by parents of kids attending) and telling them the whole story. Suddenly the school board panicked and told him to "hang on while we investigate this further", and within a few weeks, suddenly they hired someone to finally replace that vacated cafeteria position, and the lines went down.

I'd love to say that this story is an outlier from a bad school district, but sadly this type of BS is typical. This is why I oppose just handing blank checks to school districts, because they waste big $ on all kinds of dumb shit, and then skimp in essential areas which end up causing major hardships, and nobody wants to step up and fix it.

[simpdog]

Yeah, I wasn’t saying they aren’t wasteful. Around me, they often are. I was just saying there’s a tendency to view public schools=inner city, as that’s the case in many metropolitan areas. I only said I don’t see a lot
of waste in the inner city schools. I doubt you were home shopping in the ghetto. I see corruption, but not systemic waste in inner city schools. The money isn’t there to steal.

The teachers are pretty often people who view it as a calling rather than a lucrative career choice. You’ll get a rogue administrator here or here, and often bad results for even the meager investment because of how detached the parents are, but they’re never overfunded in the hood. Plus those parents are rarely paying taxes. Removing the deduction is going to be pretty polarized to districts that voted R. I imagine they’ll first blame Trump, because it will be different than the previous tax preparation has been for years, and then they’ll start voting down levies and addressing the problem of overspending in the burbs and run a tighter ship.

I agree with this.

However, as I said in my other post, the underfunded school tends to be an inner-city phenomenon, but the left likes to portray it as the typical case, thus making Republicans look evil whenever they oppose taxes which fund schools.

I have a buddy whose kids go to a public school in a district in a wealthy neighborhood. He told me a story which is so typical of California public schools.

His kids complained to him that they were waiting on 25 minute lines to get lunch. This was a new problem -- the kids said the lines were reasonable the prior year.

Anyway, he looked into it, and the whole issue was occurring because they promoted a single 4-hour-per-day cafeteria employee to another position, and the head of cafeteria services at the district decided to save money by not replacing her and just telling everyone else to work harder (lol). Presumably this was because she wanted to either reallocate the money saved or just so she could look good to superiors by claiming to have achieved more efficiency.

Getting this fixed was a huge task. My friend complained to the district and was basically told to eat shit. He went to the school board, and was again told to eat shit. Then he took matters into his own hands, took pictures of the lines snaking all around the campus, and went back to the school board. He threatened to e-mail these pictures to the companies donating $ to the school (which were owned by parents of kids attending) and telling them the whole story. Suddenly the school board panicked and told him to "hang on while we investigate this further", and within a few weeks, suddenly they hired someone to finally replace that vacated cafeteria position, and the lines went down.

I'd love to say that this story is an outlier from a bad school district, but sadly this type of BS is typical. This is why I oppose just handing blank checks to school districts, because they waste big $ on all kinds of dumb shit, and then skimp in essential areas which end up causing major hardships, and nobody wants to step up and fix it.

#firstworldproblems

Bring a lunch from home and don't use the cafeteria.

There are a lot more pressing problems....

Your friend sounds a lot like you LOL

[Tellafriend]

My school district is building a new football stadium. The only thing wrong with the old one is just that. They raised taxes last year b/c they needed more funds for educating these youth, or so they said. Glad to see the additional revenue is being put to good use. I mean why shouldn't the county property owners have to fund that versus the folks who use it? I'm very concerned about the local children's ability to play such an important game in the most update facility money can buy. But, i don't have a family foundation so what do i know about such complex subjects?

[Dan Druff]

I agree with this.

However, as I said in my other post, the underfunded school tends to be an inner-city phenomenon, but the left likes to portray it as the typical case, thus making Republicans look evil whenever they oppose taxes which fund schools.

I have a buddy whose kids go to a public school in a district in a wealthy neighborhood. He told me a story which is so typical of California public schools.

His kids complained to him that they were waiting on 25 minute lines to get lunch. This was a new problem -- the kids said the lines were reasonable the prior year.

Anyway, he looked into it, and the whole issue was occurring because they promoted a single 4-hour-per-day cafeteria employee to another position, and the head of cafeteria services at the district decided to save money by not replacing her and just telling everyone else to work harder (lol). Presumably this was because she wanted to either reallocate the money saved or just so she could look good to superiors by claiming to have achieved more efficiency.

Getting this fixed was a huge task. My friend complained to the district and was basically told to eat shit. He went to the school board, and was again told to eat shit. Then he took matters into his own hands, took pictures of the lines snaking all around the campus, and went back to the school board. He threatened to e-mail these pictures to the companies donating $ to the school (which were owned by parents of kids attending) and telling them the whole story. Suddenly the school board panicked and told him to "hang on while we investigate this further", and within a few weeks, suddenly they hired someone to finally replace that vacated cafeteria position, and the lines went down.

I'd love to say that this story is an outlier from a bad school district, but sadly this type of BS is typical. This is why I oppose just handing blank checks to school districts, because they waste big $ on all kinds of dumb shit, and then skimp in essential areas which end up causing major hardships, and nobody wants to step up and fix it.

#firstworldproblems

Bring a lunch from home and don't use the cafeteria.

There are a lot more pressing problems....

Your friend sounds a lot like you LOL

Many kids prefer the variety and hot food in cafeterias, and many parents do not have time every morning to prepare lunches for multiple kids.

My example was demonstrating the bullshit they put the kids through on a daily basis in order to save money on ONE low-paid, part-time cafeteria worker, while the district wasted big money on tons of nonsense.

Public schools are usually run by lifelong bureaucrats, and shit like this is so typical. This is why you need to ride herd on them and make sure they are utilizing the money correctly, rather than just handing them extra tax money whenever they ask for it.

[Dan Druff]

Honestly, go get a hold of the budget of any suburban school district in the US, and you will be astounded by some of the numbers you see.

Or perhaps just trust me in my assessment that government bureaucrats don't always spend efficiently and intelligently.

I know, it's hard to imagine...

[simpdog]

#firstworldproblems

Bring a lunch from home and don't use the cafeteria.

There are a lot more pressing problems....

Your friend sounds a lot like you LOL

Many kids prefer the variety and hot food in cafeterias, and many parents do not have time every morning to prepare lunches for multiple kids.

My example was demonstrating the bullshit they put the kids through on a daily basis in order to save money on ONE low-paid, part-time cafeteria worker, while the district wasted big money on tons of nonsense.

Public schools are usually run by lifelong bureaucrats, and shit like this is so typical. This is why you need to ride herd on them and make sure they are utilizing the money correctly, rather than just handing them extra tax money whenever they ask for it.

Children prefer variety/hot food -> LOL. This is why kids in the US are so entitled, especially rich ones.

I don't want to derail the discussion this, but I can just imagine a kid saying "Mommy I don't like lasagna." Then either the mom making a separate meal, or she doesn't have time so let's head down to McD's for chicken nuggets 4 times a week since you prefer them.

[Dan Druff]

Many kids prefer the variety and hot food in cafeterias, and many parents do not have time every morning to prepare lunches for multiple kids.

My example was demonstrating the bullshit they put the kids through on a daily basis in order to save money on ONE low-paid, part-time cafeteria worker, while the district wasted big money on tons of nonsense.

Public schools are usually run by lifelong bureaucrats, and shit like this is so typical. This is why you need to ride herd on them and make sure they are utilizing the money correctly, rather than just handing them extra tax money whenever they ask for it.

Children prefer variety/hot food -> LOL. This is why kids in the US are so entitled, especially rich ones.

I don't want to derail the discussion this, but I can just imagine a kid saying "Mommy I don't like lasagna." Then either the mom making a separate meal, or she doesn't have time so let's head down to McD's for chicken nuggets 4 times a week since you prefer them.

How is it entitled to want a hot meal for lunch which costs about $4, rather than having Mommy make the same peanut butter and jelly sandwich for all 180 days of the school year?

Am I missing something here? I'm not saying that kids deserve gourmet meals, but it's perfectly reasonable for kids at school to prefer a hot lunch at school. It's also more convenient for many parents (especially those that work) to just pay the $4/day rather than hassle with making lunches in the morning.

[Tellafriend]

Children prefer variety/hot food -> LOL. This is why kids in the US are so entitled, especially rich ones.

I don't want to derail the discussion this, but I can just imagine a kid saying "Mommy I don't like lasagna." Then either the mom making a separate meal, or she doesn't have time so let's head down to McD's for chicken nuggets 4 times a week since you prefer them.

How is it entitled to want a hot meal for lunch which costs about $4, rather than having Mommy make the same peanut butter and jelly sandwich for all 180 days of the school year?

Am I missing something here? I'm not saying that kids deserve gourmet meals, but it's perfectly reasonable for kids at school to prefer a hot lunch at school. It's also more convenient for many parents (especially those that work) to just pay the $4/day rather than hassle with making lunches in the morning.

Who the hell still pays for school lunches anymore? The vast majority of counties in Georgia are either totally free for every child or have the majority of the children on free or reduced lunches. You know, the parents who lack the $2.20 a day to feed their kids lunch but keep making babies.

What a nation of entitled cunts we have become. A generation of men raised by women.

[blake]

i live in a fairly affluent suburb on the east coast and have numerous family members working in public schools here.

my take on public school districts, even in wealthy areas, is that they are getting progressively fucked up but for reasons not mentioned here yet.

for whatever reason, there are more and more autistic kids and others needing extreme emotional support than ever before. these are kids that need specialized schooling and programs way beyond what is offered at public schools.

however, a public school can't send one of these kids to another school unless it pays for that schooling out of its own tax-derived revenue.

because the school boards here will get removed if they vote to increase taxes, the schools do everything in their power to avoid making those payments. so they keep these troubled kids in the school, and just put the kids in the regular classrooms. now, because more and more public schools refuse to pay for these services, many of these specialized schools have started shutting down, taking these options away.

the discipline issues and outbursts at many of the public schools are skyrocketing to all time highs. again, this is even in wealthy suburbs.

these are problems that private schools, who can pick and choose who they accept, don't have to deal with.

[gimmick]

I guess removing deductibles from the middle-class to fund the totally separate issue of giving deductibles to the truly needy wealthy is just one of those smart non bureaucratic ways of allocating money. And yes let's not focus on the inner city school districts or really any school districts that don't represent the very top of your public schools. Instead lets generalize by using an example of a school that's partly funded by donations from companies owned by the parents of pupils. I'm sure that's typical and a reasonable reflection of most public schools.

[vegas1369]

Identity politics -- making their entire constituency that they are victims and at war with the heterosexual white male

I hate this. While I agree white privilege is an issue, the far left has taken advantage of it. I also feel the far right has as well, especially middle American white males. White males are not under attack.

Softness on violent crime while crime rate rises

Agree something needs to be done here. Sessions does seem to be having an effect here, and I am all for it as long as it doesn't mean privatizing prisons and creating unreasonable sentencing structures.

Vilification of law enforcement

The worst thing the left ever did. Obama was terrible when it came to this and race relations and I haven't seen them do much to repair it. It hasn't been much of an issue lately though, not nearly as it was while Ferguson, etc. was going on. I am all for the men in blue and while I agree there are bad apples out there, the majority of police are good people and trying to protect and serve. I think my position on this over the years has been very clear.

Inexplicable lies and exaggerations about Trump despite the fact that there are literally thousands of true things which are worthy of legit criticism

I'm not seeing this all that much. He's his own worst enemy and what I'm seeing is largely his own doing. Not sure what you're talking about here, need specifics.

Longtime coverup of negative stories about party friends like Harvey Weinstein

I don't know that any democrats have been covering up these stories, haven't seen those stories. Honestly I haven't been paying attention to the sexual allegation stories all that much cause I really don't give a fuck (check for posts from me in the Weinstein thread, I don't think there is one), but if that is the case whoever was doing that is a giant scumbag in my book and should be ostracized.

Cheating in Presidential primaries

Disgusting. Again, never liked Hillary, never liked that curly haired broad that rigged the DNC...

Support of single-payer healthcare without understanding our current healthcare model enough to know that conversion to that right now would be a disaster

Repeal and replace without a replacement doesn't sound like a good idea to me, nor does changing things simply for a political win, especially when millions could lose insurance because of it. My politics on this issue are we need affordable insurance for all, pre existing conditions should not disqualify, but at the same time Obama care has a massive amount of flaws and there's a lot that needs to be fixed. We need both sides working on this together. If that doesn't happen this issue will never be resolved.

Support of "compassionate release" or "rehabilitative release" of brutal murderers

Don't know much about this issue, but I am definitely not for compassionate release of convicted murderers. There might be some situations that warrant compassion, but it would have to be extreme.

Support of higher taxes, rather than an intelligent elimination of loopholes abused by the wealthy and corporations

Agree this should be discussed. I also see the republicans completely unwilling to discuss s tax plan with democrats, so...

Repeated denial of obvious truths, such as the fact that Muslims are far more likely per capita to commit terrorist acts in the US (admitting this would be "Islamophobic" lol)

How many foreign Muslims have committed terrorist acts on our soil as opposed to Americans? I dont think democrats are saying there isn't a problem with Muslim extremists, I think they're just saying let's put things in perspective and realize we have a much larger problem within our own country with mass shootings.

Need I go on?

Sure

Answers above. All of these are "issues" and not "current events". No one is really talking about issues in this thread, or in the news since Trump forcibly dominates it daily. I am here commenting on current events I read about or see on thr news on a daily basis, none of which are ever about any of the issues you brought up.

Just going to ignore this Druff? Did I pass your centrist test?

[devidee]

Goddamn, typical Trump voters...

https://imgtc.com/w/KkxHfTS