In theory this sounds very sensible, but it would cost more to tailor curriculum to individual student needs rather than the usual uniform lesson platform and standard droning delivery method (which reaches a minority of students).
You don't need to be that specific- in my high school, we had three different levels for most topics- Gen Ed, College Prep, and Honors. It seemed to be a reasonable seperation of students into relatable groups.
The truth is that kids have their own little privately-run societies in school (on a social plane) that the adults are quite powerless to have any real control over.
You can find similar social structures in prisons, which calls into question the fundamental design of the public school system.
The kid's presence there is largely wasted effort, so they invent oft-destructive social games to use up their intellect and energy. This suggests that making school more rigourous & purposeful.
Specifically:
1) more difficult academics for the kids that can take it
2) meaningful job training in later grades for those whose interests lie elsewhere
We also need to nuke 'no child left behind' and anything that looks like it, so we can acknowledge that different children have different interests & capabilities, and handle them accordingly.
If you're telling me that we could power every home in the United States, with solar energy, for the sacrifice of a square of desert 70 miles on a side? Yeah, that sounds pretty fucking awesome.
A bunch of desert, and $3,000,000,000,000+, not counting increased labor and material costs from such a huge demand. But what's a few Trillion dollars when green dreams are on the line?
In 2010 there were 114,800,000 U.S. households, 114,800,000 / 70,000 powered homes = 1,640 of these facilities at 3 square miles per facility = 4,900 square miles! Airizona is 114,006 square miles, that is 4.2% of the state covered in panels....or roughly the entire state of Connecticut if you have some room for growth.
I'm curious as to how that would change the weather around there. Extracting that much power from such a large area would certainly have an effect on the local climate.
This figure is not just for building a website.
It is for all spending with CGI Federal over the time that they have been doing business with the Federal government, including payments from fiscal years before Obamacare was even passed.
The figure is now being regurgitated by various right wing websites without anything that even passes for thinking.
And also now slashdot, which is disappointing.
If you chase the links to the original treasury website, half of the $634 million was paid after the passage of the 'Affordable' Care Act, so I'm especially interested in the specifics of those contracts- which are still more than triple the $93 million dollar original ACA website contract.
So perhaps it's a $300 mil website instead of $600 mil. That's not really much of an improvement, to be honest.
"No, it's all lies! The website only cost a bit over a quarter-billion dollars!"
We do have to find out more specifics, to be sure. We've certainly sent that company a massive amount of money since 2010.
Everyone's got a right to their own opinion, Bennett's in this case seems to be no more relevant that a couple college kids in a dorm bullsh*t session. Further, Bennett talks quite a bit about society's interest, which isn't a concern in the original video. It is in the interest of a Lawyer's individual client to not talk to the police- public interest be damned at that point.
The Art of Diplomacy, it is said, is saying "nice doggy" whilst you look about for a large enough stick.
The sad thing about the administration's self-described 'Smart Diplomacy' is that we're in a position where German politicians will openly express contempt for the US- an ally- for some (German) election season points.
This is a consequence of two things:
1) An NSA percieved to be out of control and operating beyond their mandate.
2) A weak president that German politicians see no downside to prodding/angering.
No kidding! This "justification" for "war" is sounding like a broken record. Wasting money to kill others (who disagree with you) is spiritually retarded. When are people going to demand that violence is NOT the solution -- it is precisely part of the problem in the first place!
The trouble with that sort of thinking is that it fails to account for the fact that peace requires participation by everyone, whereas war can be started unilaterally. Hitler, for example, actively wanted war, and was frustrated by repeated capitulation to his outrageous and growing demands. We all know how that turned out in the end, of course, but it was a long painful trip for everyone involved.
The other related question- In the face of a belligerent, are you willing to give up everything to maintain a pretense of peace? Is there nothing you wouldn't surrender in order to avoid raising a fist in defense of property, of principal, or of a person?
And even if you would bare your neck to preserve the peace, and gladly be felled for your sense of 'spiritual intellegence', would you sacrifice your family, friends and neighbors for the same? If somebody wanted to rape your sister/wife/daughter, and it was in your power, but not hers, to stop him, would you let the offense proceed and pat yourself on the back for your restraint? War between nation-states is often merely an expansion of these scenarios.
The only counter argument I can see to my line of thinking is the notion that you can cure the evil in human hearts with enough love. I know of no basis in the history of human events for this naivety.
Other countries have single payer health care, which delivers better outcomes at a lower cost. Try learning from that.
And those countries do that by either gaming the statistics, or having a homogenized society where social pressure to conserve public resources can be successfully applied.
They can't because the world one learns about in law school, where courts are impartial arbiters of justice and where any tort deserves compensation, doesn't exist. We live in a world where Bush/Cheney's lawyers wrote the flimsiest of legal justifications for torturing prisoners and got away with it not because of their justifications but because of who they are.
Hey, I hate to interrupt your party-mandated two minutes of hate, but have you noticed what Obama's been up to lately? If you're whining about things more than half a decade in the past, I don't think you've been keeping up with current affairs- at least not in any intellectually honest fashion.
Not sure where the uncertainty is. Says right there - January 1, 2015.
Not that having the elections matter about implementation. Obama isn't going to let a veto go through, and even if the Senate flips, there's going to be no way that there's enough votes to override a veto. Obamacare is here, get used to it.
I'm not so sure about that. The policymakers knew upfront the ruinous act would cost them elections, so they put off the effects two years. Now they still don't want to do the damage they knew the bill would cause, because they care about this election's results as well. So as long as the elections are contested, they might keep putting off full implementation of Obamacare, rather than pay the price at the polls. They like their seats more than they want full implementation of the Affordable (snicker) Care Act. This happens to align with the interests of the nation.
God doesn't play dice. -- Albert Einstein
