That's what the judge ruled.

You're basically selling a really terrible system by making up FUD about the bad things that might happen if there are any changes. What branch of government writes your paychecks?

Let's see if any Democrats get voted out in primaries. My guess: No. Democrats in safe seats are guaranteed lifetime re-election.

You're trying "to be fair", obviously. Instead of trying to understand people, call them "batshit crazy". Insightful. Also tolerant and open-minded and thoughtful.

Free markets are the opposite of totalitarianism. Tea Party supports free markets vs. Republican allegiance to big corporate donors.

The balance of power between Washington vs. the rest of America has improved slightly.

Republicans were able to stand up and beat a Washington insider in a primary in a safe seat. Will Democrats ever be able to do that? Or are Democrat incumbents in safe seats guaranteed lifetime reelection?

Just because something occurs, that doesn't mean it needs to be governed at all. For the most part, people can live their own lives without a government mommy watching and second guessing everything they do.

And are you really trying to claim our huge central government is "efficient"? It must be really, really efficient for all that efficiency to outweigh the corruption.

Economies aren't "run". Individuals make individual choices.

Standardization regularly happens without government edict. The government didn't write the standard for email, for example, but there's still a more-or-less universal standard. It was all done without threats, without police, without graft, without government hearings, without bailouts for the losing technologies, and without paying an email tax.

...died and their empire crumbled. Their centralized government didn't save them.

I do appreciate what they do. It's just not worth the cost. I appreciate a good hamburger. I don't want to pay $2000 for a good hamburger. I don't appreciate being policed and regulated and threatened and spied on and otherwise oppressed in return for the opportunity to get on a waiting list buy a good hamburger for $2000.

How much more valuable is the 6th or 7th or 8th year of experience? If the students learn more, then teachers would be happy to be paid based of student test scores.

Teaching isn't surgery. If a surgeon has done a procedure 300 times, is it really a lot more valuable to have done it 600 times? I'm pretty sure most surgeons get paid at the same reimbursement rates for a procedure whether it's their 300th surgery or their 600th.

Because teacher salaries are divorced from the value of their teaching.

I said "drastically smaller". That's not the same thing as "without".

A drastically smaller government, for example, wouldn't include a Department of Housing and Urban Development. Housing is a personal, or at most, a local problem.

A drastically smaller government wouldn't include a Department of Education. Education is an individual or family issue. Teaching and learning are simple, harmless transfers of knowledge. They should not be governed or policed. Central government has no legitimate role in education.

Agriculture is local. Unless there's a pandemic, Health and Human Services are local. Transportation -- at least road and train transportation -- is local. Street crime is local. Central government is mostly not needed for these things.

Central government has legitimate roles: national defense, minting a currency, international diplomacy, etc. If central government stuck to doing things we really need the central government for, it would be drastically smaller, much less expensive, and there would be a lot fewer opportunities for corrupt officials and congressmen.

Your "due process" was depriving poor kids of the chance to get a basic education. That's why you lost. Come up with a way to have "due process" without cheating poor kids out of an education.

That's your argument? It's OK to cheat poor kids out of an education because ... religious bogeymen might do scary things?

Why should older teachers be (more than a little) higher paid? Is their productivity higher because they teach a larger number of students in a year? Do they teach the students who have the hardest time learning? Is "older" equivalent to more effective?

Do public schools exist to provide teacher paychecks? Or are they there for children to learn?

North Korea and Cuba? Or were you thinking of other places? Please tell us where.

Even if a few places have had good government for a few years, it's not normal. Good government has been extremely rare throughout history. It's not defeatist to understand and learn from history.

It's more like "the dog that bites me every day and eats my food is sick". Getting rid of it solves multiple problems.