Comment Archives: stories: News & Opinion: Urban Journal: Last 30 Days
Re: “Big Brother at work”
MJN - Good points. Seems that a majority of people are satisfied by the deluge of articles penned by PR firms to justify the spying & to clarify that, anyway, PRISM isn't even what we thought it was. Congress "briefings" given by the intelligence directors consist of sanitized talking points & what laws we do have get broadened widely in top secret court opinions. Meanwhile the news cycle moves on. The only wildcard I see remaining is this Snowden/Greenwald duo and whatever they might have left up their sleeves. Supposedly there are multiple leaked documents and Greenwald is working on a second round of articles.
Re: “Big Brother at work”
Better send for Peter Graves (sorry Tom Cruise) because finding a balance between security and privacy in the 21st. Century is truly a Mission Impossible. The range of opinions is simply too great.
From anti-government, tin foil-hatted paranoiacs on the Far Right, to Libertarians with unrealistic ideas of how to run a society, to Tea Partiers who’re OK with spying on Americans as long as it’s limited to Muslims and other people they don’t like, to middle-of-the-raiders who claim to see both sides of the question but can’t decide which way to lean, to those who don’t give a damn one way or the other, to those who figure that the government is too incompetent to be able to misuse the information they gather, to those who distrust the government (or at least Obama) but feel that the risk of terrorist attacks is greater than the risk to privacy, to those who trust the government to do the right thing.
Now somebody tell me what balance or system of checks and balances can possibly be put in place that can satisfy more than a small percentage of the above groups?
Re: “Our tone-deaf governor: Cuomo and the cities”
Another example of stone-deaf Cuomo: He touts his 'women's legislative agenda' and yet does NOTHING to get rid of Sheldon Silver who paid off the sexual harrassment victims of Vito Lopez. Cuomo pays nothing but lip service.
Re: “Our tone-deaf governor: Cuomo and the cities”
More BS from the bureaucrats.....typical.....NYC should be a district capital (DC) like Washington, DC...we need to chop it off and let it stand on its own, all of upstate pays for all the waste that happens down there.....their budgets for security, cameras, rent control, tax abatements and all the other stuff is in the billions of dollars....I used to live down their and some rents and taxes that are charged are still from the 50's, I think it is 2013....no wonder we are broke, we pay for them and all the poor that get better healthcare than my family and they get it for free.....
We need to reform everything in this country from the local to federal governments, the spending, corruption, consistently creating more and more stupid laws that reduce productivity in the country....we need to get back to freedom, life, and liberty and get far far away from these bureaucrats that think they can save us......
We want less government....MUCH LESS......you bureaucrats have only gotten in the way of private progress....you do not solve problems, you are the problem......
Again, Cuomo is bidding for the 2016 election......he will do whatever it takes to look good at the tax payers expense...especially where all the population is, Albany and NYC.....he has done nothing for NY and will do far worse as a president.......
Re: “Our tone-deaf governor: Cuomo and the cities”
Yep. A man of action. It's how things get done. Pass a gun control bill without allowing any input from anyone. It leaves a lot of mess, anger and uncertaintly to be sorted out later, but it as long as Cuomo's political aspirations are served, he doesn't care.
Re: “Our tone-deaf governor: Cuomo and the cities”
Keep in mind that Cuomo is responsible to the statewide electorate, not just the few upstate cities. City living is a luxury and should mainly be funded by those people who choose it. People who live outside of the city manage to get along without multiple hundreds of professional police, rec centers, music festivals, etc., and increasingly do not come to a city even for work. As those people manage to mainly self-fund their local governments through their own property taxes, they have a reasonable expectation that cities should do so to the same extent.
Re: “War, policy, and Obama”
I find the selection of the subject of Obama's speech on the US and terrorism as an amazing attempt to look at this past week through rose colored glasses ...... To ignore three separate scandals with this administration over its head in defending its actions for a speech which was clearly an attempt to deflect the attention from the scandals is just amazing even for a liberal leaning paper ..... But lets take the speech, "the destruction of Muslim Extremist terrorism" is anything but close to an end. Right now the US is working on a method to cover their gun running to Syria via Benghazi and Turkey by getting multiple countries to remove the international restriction on aiding any single side to overthrow a government. The US government violated international law by these actions. Gun running is exactly why the Ambassador was in Benghazi in the first place..... Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Syria are all being controlled / disrupted by the Muslim Brotherhood and its associates. The Coptic Christians are fleeing Egypt by the 10s of thousands due to the attacks by members of the Muslim Brotherhood there...... but Mary Anna Towler chooses to do a critique of the President's speech and describes it as " eloquent, principled and rational one"..... She references the need for an "informed public" .... I must suggest that what we need is "a more informed media" at all levels ....... then maybe we would get those who have access to this administration to start the inquiries to expose the tyrannical actions of big government , and specifically this administration.
Re: “War, policy, and Obama”
"Trillions"? Hardly. But, hey, the poor have too much and the rich not enough. How about winding down the right-wing war on the middle class?
Re: “War, policy, and Obama”
"It is time, though, to wind this war - whatever you want to call it - down. It's also time to wind down the war on drugs, now, after how many hundreds of billions of dollars? "
How about winding down the liberal "War on Poverty" that has been in place since the Johnson administration? TRILLIONS of dollars have been spent on that and guess what? We seem to have more poor people than ever.
Re: “War, policy, and Obama”
This would have been a great speech, had Obama made it in 2009 as part of fulfilling his campaign promises, or rather his implied campaign promises. Four years later however it's stale, trite, disingenuous and way too late.
Re: “War, policy, and Obama”
@Reggie: We are neither going home nor declaring victory, although at least this President has decimated al Qaeda. He's also made us more hated in Pakistan than India, an ominous situation with a country that is producing nuclear weapons by the dozens. It is time, though, to wind this war - whatever you want to call it - down. It's also time to wind down the war on drugs, now, after how many hundreds of billions of dollars? And with what results? but is now in 115 countries. 115 countries! That's the definition of insane.
This "war on terrorism" lexicon is nuts, too: Are we really at war with, for example, Shining Path? The military wing of the Irish Republican Army? Does anyone recall Franklin D. Roosevelt declaring war on carrier-based airplanes on December 8, 1941?
Re: “War, policy, and Obama”
Oh, so that's how you end the war on terrorism: declare victory and go home.
Re: “What if we're investing in the wrong education?”
The "we" has to include black families themselves. What many liberals are unwilling to confront is that there are lots of people having children who aren't raising them - mothers and fathers. Poverty is part of the equation, but it's not necessarily the explanation for it.
"We" seem willing to assign blame to teachers, racism, capitalism, etc., but the bottom line is that "we" can only help people who help themselves. That means people who are struggling need to exercise self-control - not having children you can't or aren't willing to support. It means taking responsibility for parenting the children you bear, including taking an active role your kids' education and their well-being.
It's important to help people who are struggling. But "we" need to provide a safety net - not a safety hammock. When "we" assume responsibility for providing everyone with food, housing, education, health care, and child care, we'll get the same result every time. "We" may have good intentions, but ultimately we're enabling shiftlessness and accepting blame for outcomes that are not our responsibility.
Re: “What if we're investing in the wrong education?”
And yet somehow, the beleaguered RCSD faculty is supposed to overcome this gap or we lose our jobs.
Lots and lots of hard-working educators spend hours and hours preparing, teaching and assessing. Yet we're told we're just not good enough.
I know this article isn't meant to tell us to stop or that our efforts are pointless. The point (which many have been arguing for a long time) is that the current reform efforts are aimed in the wrong direction. Over 95% of the people who teach in the district are fine, and are doing the best with the hand we've been dealt. Reforms must be targeted at the people who need the help - children and parents.
If we spent 1/3 of what we spend on Special Ed in early childhood care and educating parents, we would need less than the 2/3 remaining in the budget. (Not a study result, just some darn fine logical thinking.)
Why does the district spend so much? To try to play catch-up. If I were a race car driver and I started a 500 mile race when my competitors already had 150 miles done, I'd need to be spending way more on my car to even consider being competitive. If I could somehow start at the same time as all the others, I would not need to spend quite so much on my car. It's a clunky analogy, but it works.
Re: “Big Brother at work”
A good joke told by Jay Leno: ‘We wanted a president that listens to all Americans - now we have one’
A joke told by Barack Obama: "This is the most transparent administration in history"