Nutjobs Ranting About Politics.

[Say_hello_for_me]

I wasn't around in '98 or '99 in this profession. So I guess I have to ask, what was it like in busy offices? Suddenly, there is barely any time to visit people. Maybe one meal a week with friends and visitors. Large turnover of staff for going on one-year, and suddenly we have 4 new lawyers in a boutique that are all starting within a 1 month time-frame (lawyers tend not to leave here very often).

What was it like? For those who lived during the entire 98-'00 period, what can we expect? Would you do this over again, or would you scurry for in-house cover and forego the pay?

Suddenly, the grass on this side looks too green, like its been sprayed with toxic chemicals that will soon kill me.

Hello

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
What was it like? For those who lived during the entire 98-'00 period, what can we expect? Hello

That was when AG forced himself to get so regular so he could manage his schedule, and also when Sidd really gained all the weight.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
I wasn't around in '98 or '99 in this profession. So I guess I have to ask, what was it like in busy offices?

Having lived through that period with a top year of over 3500 billed hours, I can tell you that there are good points and bad points to it.

At least, I think there must be good points. I don't remember any, but they must be there. After all, intelligent people wouldn't abdicate their lives like that if there weren't good points, right?

Right?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

If this was coming from a shrill lefty critic of the President, I would dismiss it as hysterical. But since George Will is none of those things (OK, he can be critical of the President), I wonder what he's talking about in the last paragraph:

• In all this, the concept of sovereignty is being pounded shapeless. Preemptive war was waged, in part, to notify enemies of the United States that U.S. sovereignty could not be paralyzed by world opinion or the noncooperation of international institutions. And one measure of progress in Iraq was the June 28 transfer of sovereignty.
  
  But in a New York Times story from Najaf, readers learn, regarding the problem of Moqtada Sadr and his militia, that a Marine spokesman says, "We'll continue operations as the prime minister [Ayad Allawi] sees fit." And readers learn that U.S. commanders "curbed a broader national amnesty proposal announced by Dr. Allawi earlier this week, limiting its terms to exclude any rebels who have taken part in actions killing or wounding American troops."
  
  So does sovereignty reside with the prime minister whose will evidently commands U.S. commanders? Or with those commanders who curb the prime minister's will?
  
  A house so divided cannot stand. If it is the prime minister's will, or that of Iraq's embryonic democratic institutions, to conduct with insurgent factions negotiations that strip the Iraqi state of an essential attribute of statehood -- a monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence -- the U.S. presence will become untenable.
  
  Untenable even before what may be coming before November: an Iraqi version of the North Vietnamese Tet offensive of 1968. To say that the coming offensive will be by "Baathists" is, according to one administration official, akin to saying "Nazis" when you mean "the SS" -- the most fearsome of the Nazis. Such an offensive could make Sadr's insurgency seem a minor irritant. And it could unmake a presidency, as Tet did.

link

[Tyrone Slothrop]

This education proposal from the Kerry campaign sounds a lot like the compromise I described a while back -- more spending on schools, but tied to a deal to cut the power of the teacher's unions:

• Kerry's second pitch is the real winner. His education plan makes use of federal incentives to succeed precisely where NCLB failed. Like a good liberal, Kerry dishes the carrot. But as Jonathan Schorr's excellent article from the August Washington Monthly documents, Kerry's proposal is also "quietly radical."
  
  The plan focuses almost single-mindedly (and wisely) on recruiting good teachers with a whole new pot of federal money. The catch is, most of the cash can only be used for standardized, merit-based salary increases, and only in concert with a streamlined process for firing bad teachers.
  
  Linking teacher pay to performance has angered the teachers' unions. But that's the genius of Kerry's plan (politically and policy-wise). Unlike NCLB, where unions, districts, and state lawmakers can find common ground opposing heavy-handed federal mandates and threats, Kerry's plan simply dangles a pot of money for any school district that's willing to devise a new system. If the teachers unions don't want performance measures, they're left in the tough position of having to "explain to their members why they're walking away from potentially federally funded salary increases."
  
  Kerry deserves a lot more credit for these Sister Souljah steps. He's confronted a traditional Democratic ally to help bring, as Schorr writes, "the American way" to public schools, "a straightforward inducement to hard work and results."

TNR

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I wonder what he's talking about in the last paragraph:

Conventional wisdom holds that, prior to the elections, there will be a massive, last-gasp insurgency, led, not by the wannabe Sadr types, but by the professional soldiers of Saddam, and accompanied by the quasi-professional non-Iraqi Islamisists who see Iraq as the jihadi front. I suspect it will be quite massive. They truly want Bush out, and Spain has taught them well.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
This education proposal from the Kerry campaign sounds a lot like the compromise I described a while back -- more spending on schools, but tied to a deal to cut the power of the teacher's unions:

You forgot the last paragraph:

"Of course, campaign proposals have a funny way of not turning into laws. And, to be sure, we're never going to have major education reform except at the state level. That's where the action is--and where teachers unions are at their most powerful in Democratic politics. Unfortunately, few Democrats seem willing to follow Kerry's lead. Aren't there any ambitious governors or gubernatorial hopefuls out there willing to get a little radical to fix public education?"

And, remember back a while, when Kerry first proposed this sort of thing in a speech to the NEA faithful, and they got quite cool to him for a bit, and then he quietly backtracked and vowed not to screw with teachers, and then they backed him wholeheartedly?

Just lke his overt hawkishness is backed by a stealth plan to withdraw from Iraq soon, I suspect this radical ed fix will simply disappear, if in fact he doesn't issue four or five contradictory messages before the election. He needs the NEA, and this isn't going to please them.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
You forgot the last paragraph:

I didn't "forget" it, just like I didn't forget the first several paragraphs about what wrong with Bush's education policy. I was posting about Kerry, not about Bush or other Democrats.

You seem to agree with what Kerry says he wants to do, but think that if we elect him, he'll turn out just as ineffectual and flip-floppy on education as Bush. I suppose it's possible.

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by bilmore
And, remember back a while, when Kerry first proposed this sort of thing in a speech to the NEA faithful, and they got quite cool to him for a bit, and then he quietly backtracked and vowed not to screw with teachers, and then they backed him wholeheartedly?

Just lke his overt hawkishness is backed by a stealth plan to withdraw from Iraq soon, I suspect this radical ed fix will simply disappear, if in fact he doesn't issue four or five contradictory messages before the election. He needs the NEA, and this isn't going to please them.

Most of my teacher friends are actually supportive of this proposal. To be sure, they are on the younger side and several of them teach at charter schools, so perhaps they are not indicative of the real forces at work in the NEA. But I just don't think it's as monolithic as you say.

Of course as I type this I realize that another force at work may be the recent lean budget years out here in CA and elsewhere. With all the pink slips that have been flying around at the end of every school year of late, perhaps the promise of added dollars and the knowledge that the underperforming teachers will be the ones on the firing line (instead of the current LIFO system) could outweigh the traditional teacher resistance to reform.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
You seem to agree with what Kerry says he wants to do, but think that if we elect him, he'll turn out just as ineffectual and flip-floppy on education as Bush. I suppose it's possible.

It's worse than that. I think that, in many instances, Kerry is being explicitly disingenuous in setting out his positions, saying what he thinks needs to be said to capture the middle, but intending to ignore all of those indications once he's in office.

It's worse than thinking he's flippy. I think he's lying.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
It's worse than that. I think that, in many instances, Kerry is being explicitly disingenuous in setting out his positions, saying what he thinks needs to be said to capture the middle, but intending to ignore all of those indications once he's in office.

It's worse than thinking he's flippy. I think he's lying.

I thought of pointing out that you were accusing him of lying, but I thought I'd let it go for a while. It's clever of you to accuse him of lying about what he wants to do, since it's definitionally impossible to rebut.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
With all the pink slips that have been flying around at the end of every school year of late, perhaps the promise of added dollars and the knowledge that the underperforming teachers will be the ones on the firing line instead of the current LIFO system could outweigh the traditional teacher resistance to reform.

I come from an education-centric family. I firmly believe that teachers will never allow tenured teachers to be adjudged "underperforming" and then removed. It will just never happen, except in the most egregious of cases.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I thought of pointing out that you were accusing him of lying, but I thought I'd let it go for a while. It's clever of you to accuse him of lying about what he wants to do, since it's definitionally impossible to rebut.

Since I think he's going to win, my accusation is more risky than your "Bush lied" theme. At some point, I'm either going to be vindicated, or look foolish.

(ETA - Okay, more foolish.)

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
What gets me is the guys who are anti-war, but pro-Kerry. How do you justify that? Or is it a wink and a nod that you know Kerry isn't really willing to go to war, he just says he is?

By antiwar, do you mean anti all war? By the way you phrase the question, it seems you think it's hypocritical for anyone opposed to war to vote for anyone who would be willing to go to war. Since all electable presidential candidates have to be willing to go to war, this would mean that all antiwar folks are pretty much disqualified from having an impact on any presidential election, sicne they would be stuck voting for the Feng Shui party every time. That seems odd.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
Since I think he's going to win, my accusation is more risky than your "Bush lied" theme. At some point, I'm either going to be vindicated, or look foolish.

(ETA - Okay, more foolish.)

Bush misled people about facts on the ground. When Tommy Franks tells Bush that they've been looking for ten years and have never found a single weapon of mass destruction, and Bush turns around and says otherwise to reporters, I will agree with you that it's not risky or foolish to point out what he was up to.

But since you're talking about what Kerry wants to do, not about what he will do, you're never going to be tested. When the GOP House and Senate don't pass Kerry's education reform, you're going to say you were vindicated?