Still Hating America.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
Los Angeles Unified employs about 35,000 teachers, but from 1990 to 1999 it managed to get rid of just one through its dismissal process.

I read this and surmise that (a) they aren't trying, or (b) they initiate dismissal proceedings and that teachers have some reason to quite before the proceedings are concluded. Which is neither here nor there in the context of your larger argument.

Apropos of the prison guards, do you blame the prison guards for organizing effectively and throwing their weight around?

If you ran a football league (call it the "NFL") and there was one football team (the "Colts," say) that was dominant, winning most of its games by convincing margins, would you fault that team for excelling at what it does, or would you conclude that the league should establish different rules to promote parity?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
The Enron executives weren't LOATHSOME. They just displayed a little bad judgment and were unlucky. Alternatively, they are victims of over-regulation.

In a sense, they were. Gary Winnick sits in a mansion in Beverley Hills. Never. Been. Prosecuted.

Regulation is necessary, but it will always have the unintended consequence of creating smarter thieves and fucking the mid-sized guy while leaving loopholes for the bigger players who can afford lobbyists to ensure they keep their advantage. So while I agree with you that it is needed, its benefits are very much in debate.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Why do you think your fees are subsidizing anything? It's not like you're paying them more than you'd pay their competitor, no?

This is a goofy debate. If you apply the "a butterfly flapping its wings can cause an earthquake on the other side of the planet" approach, everything subsidizes something else. I'm not suggesting you did that; I just know where this thread goes.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
Why do you think your fees are subsidizing anything? It's not like you're paying them more than you'd pay their competitor, no?

All pro bono is "subsidized" by paying customers. Are you seriously trying to say it isn't?

There are thousands of indigent and/or unrepresented defendants out there and that any of these firms* could step up and represent.

Rather, they are making the deliberate choice to pick up a political football and meddle in wartime affairs.

So...if they suffer from their choice, so be it.

*Pillsbury Winthrop; Jenner & Block; Hunton & Williams; Alston & Bird; Cutler Pickering; Weil Gotshal; Paul Weiss Rifkin; Covington & Burling; Mayer Brown; Pepper Hamilton; Perkins Cole; Fulbright Jaworski;Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, and Venable.

[Adder]

Originally posted by Spanky

The posts you like are my original ones, and then when people start getting nasty I respond in kind.

At the risk of speaking (inaccurately) for SAM, they really aren't. You often do begin the discussion by declaring your position to be obvious and unassailable (as you did this one).

And here, when some of us suggested that your positions were less than obvious and unassailable, you really haven't done much beyond repeat your assertions (without sharing why you think the critiques are inapt) and trumpetted that you sit on a board. For example, G3 has shared a number of thoughtful posts, and I don't think you have responded to any of them (although, admittedly, I have not checked).

As SAM mentioned, this is frustrating because at times you really do seem open to discussion. Other times (this discussion, and the "torture is good" argument, as examples) you have merely become repetive or defensive when challenged.

As for suggesting that you know nothing about this topic, well, I was simply drawing conclusions based on your absolutist statements. Clearly I was in error. It isn't that you know nothing about the topic, it is that you wish to stick to your opinion without letting facts get in the way. My apologies. The positions that you advocate do happen to be republican dogma. They have been touted repeatedly by republican on the national stage (W, in particular) and in a number of jurisdictions (Minnesota and Virginia to my personal knowledge). But if you have reached your conclusions completely independently of that fact, again, my apologies.

But let me give you an yet another example that I think shows that your conclusion that the core issues that trouble public education are tenure, social promotion, and lack of testing. Let me begin with the caveat that my exposure to these schools is rather old, but my depictions were accurate as recently as five years ago.

For our case study, let's look at the Minneapolis public schools. In particular, Minneapolis North and Minneapolis South. The former is in the roughest, and poorest part of Minneapolis. It struggles to do a fair job educating its students. Minneapolis South, on the other hand, is has a strong reputation for producing top-notch students, and is well respected in the community. It also happens to be in one of the wealthier parts of the city (drawing its local students from the lakes area south of downtown).

Both schools are part of the same school district. Teachers at both are part of the same collective bargaining unit, and subject to the same job protections. The schools have the same testing (and did before the recent rounds of additional state-mandated testing), and presumably have the same policies on social promotion (I have to assume as I don't specifically know).

Yes, I know that Minneapolis isn't in California. And maybe there is something extra special unique about the LA labor situation (which I doubt, as I have said and you have not responded to), but it is safe to say that Minneapolis's liberal-dominated city government is just as beholden to the political power of the teachers unions as anywhere.

So, Spanky, what do you think explains their different results?

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore


There are thousands of indigent and/or unrepresented defendants out there and that any of these firms* could step up and represent.

Rather, they are making the deliberate choice to pick up a political football and meddle in wartime affairs.

So...if they suffer from their choice, so be it.

*Pillsbury Winthrop; Jenner & Block; Hunton & Williams; Alston & Bird; Cutler Pickering; Weil Gotshal; Paul Weiss Rifkin; Covington & Burling; Mayer Brown; Pepper Hamilton; Perkins Cole; Fulbright Jaworski;Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, and Venable.

So do you agree with the legal scholars at The Corner currently speculating that these firms are accepting bribes for their pro bono work, or that they're seeking to curry favor with foreign governments or terrorist groups?

Or is your theory that these firms' hatred of America is more general and diffuse?

[Adder]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
All pro bono is "subsidized" by paying customers. Are you seriously trying to say it isn't?

Only the expenses. And even that indirectly.

Whether I spend 2 hours or 200 hours doing pro bono this year has no effect on my paying client's bill.

There are thousands of indigent and/or unrepresented defendants out there and that any of these firms* could step up and represent.

Which they do.

Rather, they are making the deliberate choice to pick up a political football and meddle in wartime affairs.

Some of us think that questions of the appropriate exercise of police power, and executive usurpation of judicial power, are particularly important topics.

*Pillsbury Winthrop; Jenner & Block; Hunton & Williams; Alston & Bird; Cutler Pickering; Weil Gotshal; Paul Weiss Rifkin; Covington & Burling; Mayer Brown; Pepper Hamilton; Perkins Cole; Fulbright Jaworski;Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, and Venable.

You don't have a complete list.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore


*Pillsbury Winthrop; Jenner & Block; Hunton & Williams; Alston & Bird; Cutler Pickering; Weil Gotshal; Paul Weiss Rifkin; Covington & Burling; Mayer Brown; Pepper Hamilton; Perkins Cole; Fulbright Jaworski;Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, and Venable.

Scumbags and traitors, although the former is a typical epithet for people of that ilk, i.e. lawyers.

I quit and am turning in my bar cards.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Gattigap
So do you agree with the legal scholars at The Corner currently speculating that these firms are accepting bribes for their pro bono work, or that they're seeking to curry favor with foreign governments or terrorist groups?

Or is your theory that these firms' hatred of America is more general and diffuse?

I think that they are so valueless and morally adrift that they will happily take money from terrorists and in the process fund our enemy to do battle against and kill innocent Americans. The only bright spot about the terrorists bringing the battle to the US will be seeing these pieces of shits weep for their worthless lives while peeing themselves, just before they get executed by the radical Islamist hordes,

At least Saddam took it like a man, i doubt any of the GPs at these places have his balls.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
This is a goofy debate. If you apply the "a butterfly flapping its wings can cause an earthquake on the other side of the planet" approach, everything subsidizes something else. I'm not suggesting you did that; I just know where this thread goes.

The word "subsidy" always carries unspoken assumptions about who should be paying for what. But if I pay you a market rate of $300/hour for 20 hours a week, I'm not subsidizing you to play golf 20 hours a week any more than I'm subsidizing you to bill my competitor at $300/hour for the another 20 hours of the week.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Adder


You don't have a complete list.

I am also boycotting Blank Rome now that they hired Ferraro.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
All pro bono is "subsidized" by paying customers. Are you seriously trying to say it isn't?

Yes. You're abusing the word.

There are thousands of indigent and/or unrepresented defendants out there and that any of these firms* could step up and represent.

Rather, they are making the deliberate choice to pick up a political football and meddle in wartime affairs.

So...if they suffer from their choice, so be it.

*Pillsbury Winthrop; Jenner & Block; Hunton & Williams; Alston & Bird; Cutler Pickering; Weil Gotshal; Paul Weiss Rifkin; Covington & Burling; Mayer Brown; Pepper Hamilton; Perkins Cole; Fulbright Jaworski;Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, and Venable.

Nothing here has anything to do with your torture of the word "subsidy."

"Aaaarrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhh!!!!!!"

Hear that? "Subsidy" is begging you to stop. Stop, Slave, stop.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Yes. You're abusing the word.



Nothing here has anything to do with your torture of the word "subsidy."

"Aaaarrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhh!!!!!!"

Hear that? "Subsidy" is begging you to stop. Stop, Slave, stop.

In the spirit of partisanship, I agree with Slave.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke on income inequality:

• Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke cautioned that widening inequality may make Americans "less willing to accept the dynamism... so essential to economic progress," but warned politicians to avoid responding by limiting the flexibility of labor markets or erecting barriers to international trade and investment.
  
  Wiser responses, he said, would be to improve education and training and cushion the dislocations caused by technology and globalization, such as making health and pension benefits more portable and offering retraining and job-search assistance to displaced workers....
  
  "Although average economic well-being has increased considerably over time," he said "the degree of inequality in economic outcomes has increase as well... for at least three decades," he said, wandering beyond the boundaries of the aspects of the economy over which the Fed has direct influence.... [Bernanke] documented the inequality trend and detailed reasons behind it -- from the extra wages that employers are willing to pay workers with formal education to the decline of unions to the impact of globalization, which he said has been "moderate and almost surely less important than the effects of... technological change."...
  
  [H]e offered three principles that he said are "broadly accepted in our society" -- economic opportunity should be as widely distributed and equal as possible, economic outcomes needn't be equal but should be linked to a person's contributions and people should get some insurance against "the most adverse economic outcome."
  
  "We... believe," he said, "that no one should be allowed to slip too far down the economic ladder, especially for reason beyond his or her control."
  
  Mr. Bernanke... avoided any mention of tax policy, a favorite tool of Democrats interesting in reducing the inequality produced by market forces.

WSJ,* via Brad DeLong

* news, not op-ed

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke on income inequality:
[list]Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke cautioned that widening inequality may make Americans "less willing to accept the dynamism... so essential to economic progress," but warned politicians to avoid responding by limiting the flexibility of labor markets or erecting barriers to international trade and investment.

Wiser responses, he said, would be to improve education

If only we could defeat the liberals and their allies in the teacher's unions, this might be possible,.