Why are charter schools called public in the US? Just because they are funded with public money? We call them private in Sweden as they are directed by a private entity and the profits are also private.
Yeah, it’s a marketing thing, with some tax loophole type stuff. Charters were pushed by people looking to privatize and destroy public education. Mostly conservatives and neoliberals.
democracyjournal.org/…/the-untold-history-of-char…… In the 1970s, deregulation was the name of the game. Efforts to deregulate major sectors of government took root under Ford and Carter, and continued to escalate throughout the 1980s under Reagan. From banking and energy to airlines and transportation, liberals and conservatives both worked to promote deregulatory initiatives spanning vast sectors of public policy. Schools were not immune. Since at least the late 1970s, political leaders in Minnesota had been discussing ways to reduce direct public control of schools. A private school voucher bill died in the Minnesota legislature in 1977, and Minnesota’s Republican governor Al Quie, elected in 1979, was a vocal advocate for school choice. Two prominent organizations were critical in advancing school deregulation in the state. One was the Minnesota Business Partnership, comprised of CEOs from the state’s largest private corporations; another was the Citizens League, a powerful, centrist Twin Cities policy group. When the League spoke, the legislature listened—and often enacted its proposals into law. In 1982 the Citizens League issued a report endorsing private school vouchers on the grounds that consumer choice could foster competition and improvement without increasing state spending, and backed a voucher bill in the legislature in 1983. The Business Partnership published its own report in 1984 calling for “profound structural change” in schooling, with recommendations for increased choice, deregulation, statewide testing, and accountability. The organized CEOs would play a major role throughout the 1980s lobbying for K-12 reform, as part of a broader agenda to limit taxes and state spending. …
Public funds should not pay for private for-profit education where the government has little to no oversight over curriculum (which I’m sure is not the case in Sweden). That’s what happens in the US. We’re broken.
There is quite some regulation on the curriculum, but the school system in sweden is completely ruined. The charter schools are allowed unlimited profits, they give away high grades for free just to get a greater score, they turn away kids they think will be too expensive. It’s a free fall dumpster fire.
Some people call them public because they are funded by the government, not by tuition or private donors. The claim is that a private company freed from government restrictions can do a better job more efficiently.
That’s a huge load of bullcrap: diverting public school funds from the school system toward private profit
I realize this is gunna make me sound fairly radical and murdery, but it’s more legit curiousity…
I sometimes wonder why out of all the people living in misery why someone hasn’t gone on to just pick a CEO and… assassinate them? Like they are generally not super well protected. They aren’t living like spies with people tasting their food for poison or anything.
People have been losing their patience with Corporate wealth for a long time and talking pitchforks for decades but it’s not like these people are untouchable and unknowable. A lot of this stuff is fairly public information. I figure the prerequisites for stochastic terrorism would be pretty ripe but like… Why haven’t we heard about even one case? Is it just too personal you think? What is the threshold for domestic terrorist incidents? Why do we see all these lone wolf gunman going after schools and clubs because they have been made so VERY angry… but not tracking down singular people? Is it a different psychological requirement?
I sometimes wonder why out of all the people living in misery why someone hasn’t gone on to just pick a CEO and…
I have some guesses…
As long as mainstream media exists, any lone actor will be branded as a terrorist or murderer and will be viewed as this by most people rather than the start of a movement. This makes it very likely to be arrested or killed as well as bring harm and unwanted attention to your loved ones.
The rich people are fairly well protected, by living in exclusive neighborhoods, spending time where threats can’t afford to get near, knowing the police are there to protect them.
People are taught to give our right to self defense to the state, that self defense is not ok for “civilized people” except in cases of immediate mortal danger.
Don’t kid yourself, the whole point of the state is to facilitate relatively safe theft from classes not in control of it. We are taught to conflate it with “government” and told that it is necessary to prevent utter chaos.
The reason you see right wingers shooting stuff up is I think might have something to do with their lesser ability to reason why such actions are not actually in their favor. That is to say, they are dumber.
I am not sure that’s entirely it. Like… Those “exclusive neighbourhoods” basically just means “has fence and security system”. If you didn’t care about getting caught - basically spree killer style martyrdom- there isn’t much to stop you. Most CEOs are notorious creatures of habit and they publicize where they will be fairly regularly. Just hang out by the right golf course and you’ll find em.
I think it’s just a different mindset. Maybe picking a specific target is more of a cold blooded logic killer thing not a hot blooded spree killer thing and the two require entirely separate buy ins? Or the target type is the difference. Spree killers tend to pick big populations for shock value or because it represents a wider social movement. They also take a bunch of people with them which probably satisfies a feeling of making it “worth it”. It is kind of a “fuck that guy in particular” kind of premeditation you would need combined with a conviction to essentially light yourself on fire to burn someone else… And a one to one trade isn’t exactly a feel good catharsis.
I don’t think it’s a matter that a couple of isolated incidents wouldn’t cause a panic or not be consequential on a wider scale. I feel like the allure of extreme wealth would lose it’s luster pretty fast if suddenly people felt the need to have extreme security details all the time. I don’t think it would stop people from dragon hording but it wouldn’t take too many incidents before they all would be too afraid to walk to the corner to grab a coffee in person at least for awhile. Generally being rich comes with the idea that it gives you more freedom, not less.
I think it’s something on the horizon though. A lot of the language around the extreme wealthy is pretty dehumanizing. Like “He seems like a robot” or “souless narcissistic dirtbag” or “eat the rich” type rhetoric is pretty normalized. I think it’s just most people value themselves more highly then taking out a single CEO regardless of the differing scope of individual impacts. We are kind of wired to look at the extreme wealthy as both above and apart in ability to impact the world stage… While simultaneously being kind of non-special people who aren’t more or less worthwhile than we ourselves. It might just be that there’s still enough hope around that things will change through non-violent means… But I think it is something more about the basic mental math.
I personally just hope we can tax the everliving bajeezus out of them and start some sensible basic quality of life initiatives and electoral reform before it starts getting properly ugly.
“I personally just hope we can tax the everliving bajeezus out of them and start some sensible basic quality of life initiatives and electoral reform before it starts getting properly ugly.”
When corruption is legal and money controls the systems, there’s no shot at getting that reform. We need reform before the reform. I’ve said this before, but it’s only around an average of $100,000 to buy a Supreme Court justice. And Clarence Thomas skews those numbers like crazy. It’s probably closer to $20,000.
Those “exclusive neighbourhoods” basically just means “has fence and security system”. If you didn’t care about getting caught - basically spree killer style martyrdom- there isn’t much to stop you.
aint no way you will go on any kind of spree in any sort of rich gated community, not alone, the cops will be there at the first hint of a problem for the upper class.
I work in the development department of a tiny city that’s surrounded by a major city on all sides. It’s an enclave for the super-rich, with the average new house here costing over 10 times that of the surrounding area.
There’s actually sections in city code regarding the regulation of servant’s quarters.
The houses are mostly owned by shell corporations designed to hide the identity of the actual residents. But I know who a lot of them are, and you’ve definitely heard some of the names, though a lot of the obscenely-rich work hard to start out of the press. There’s a billionaire here whose picture I cannot find anywhere online.
Among my many duties, I review the plans for all the houses coming in.
They have sooo much security. You just don’t know about it. There’s multiple panic rooms, security offices, popup bollards, bulletproof windows, and more.
There are no sidewalks or parks. No sightlines from the street to the house. They build “water features” (moats) and plant vegetative screening to make accessing the house impractical except through the gate - some of which have guardhouses.
It’s been done before… before the “Red Scare” there was the “Black Scare” - it’s where the trope of the “bomb-throwing anarchist” comes from.
It’s a valid tactic - but if it’s not carefully done and well thought through, it can end up creating a lot of blowback… as it did for the anarchist Alexander Berkman when he attempted to assassinate the capitalist Henry Clay Frick (hint - don’t assassinate a capitalist during a strike… if the striking workers thought that’d work they’d probably do it themselves).
I often wonder why people wronged by these mega corporations just don’t buy a cheap drone and fix an explosive to it like you see in Ministry for the Future or in Ukraine’s defense against invading Russian soldiers. They don’t even need to assassinate these CEOs, they can just blow up their assets to hurt them. Insurance might pay for the damages the first few times but they’ll stop covering these assets if it becomes too large a burden for them.
Ohhhh… Yeah, if that had been a Baptist school they would have won. I’m sure someone said, “if the Catholics get a school then the muslims and satanists will want one too.” Right call, wrong reason.
Growing up there most families i knew were Baptist or Church of Christ, with a few methodists thrown in. Used to joke that Oklahoma would stay dry as long as Baptists could stumble to the polls.
ETA- All of my friends went to Falls Creek camp. They invited me but i was never allowed to go because one friend told a story about hammering nails into a cross and crying. That’s where most people i knew had their first ‘romantic experiences’ - first kiss, etc.
Good. Keep religious indoctrination out of the school room. 👍🏻
It’s a shame about all the other indoctrination that is still there. But at least let the kids grow up before religion comes knocking at the door. (Literally knocking in the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses…lol)
When the working class revolts, the Uber rich will just use misinformation to blame it on the blacks/Jews/gays/<insert popular minority here> and the working class will kill them instead
That’s how it always has worked, the working class isnt exactly know for seeing through propaganda. This is also the reason why in the US, the Republican party works so hard to destroy education. Dumb people are easier to control, easier to lie to, easier to suppress.
Don’t say it ain’t so, this shit is right now happening with Trump, and large swathes of the working class are lapping up his lies as if it were caviar, even though Trump is the very prime target they should direct their anger to.
I know that’s true, but we have to devise plans to fight back against this. How could we fight against misinformation from the ruling class and their control of the media?
I agree, honest media is out there, but you have to seek it. Corporate media is out for your eyeballs at any cost and will exaggerate, diminish, and outright lie if they can get more views, and is incredibly biased generally.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t work in general. It is easier to poison discussion than it is to convince people with arguments. One person screaming obscenities prevent an entire room of people from having a rational discussion. It’s an asymmetrical effort, it’s hard work to produce quality information, and it’s free to generate gigabytes of slanted information.
If you are a human being, there are many things you know are true, but you act as if they are not. We are not rational creatures, we are social creatures. We don’t respond to arguments, we respond to social cues. It is more important for an extremely social creature like a human to agree with their social group than to be objectively correct.
The story here isn’t that AI is denying care to seniors, it’s that AI put those clinical staff at insurance companies who have been denying care to seniors for years out of a job
There’s a reason for the date! The UAW has called for a potential general strike in the United States on May 1, 2028.
UAW president Shawn Fain has invited other unions to align their contract expiration dates with April 30, 2028, setting the stage for a coordinated national strike on May Day 2028[1][3].
This call comes after the UAW’s successful strike against major automakers in 2023. The union sees this as an opportunity to unite workers across industries and flex collective labor power[1][3].
The proposed 2028 strike aims to address broader working class issues beyond just the auto industry. Some advocates suggest focusing on demands like Medicare for All[2][4].
To make this general strike a reality, unions would need to start planning now to align their contract dates. It would require unprecedented cooperation between major unions[3].
While ambitious, this proposal is seen as more credible coming from a large, established union like the UAW rather than social media activists[4].
Critics note that organizing an actual general strike is extremely challenging and rare in the US. However, supporters argue that even the process of organizing towards this goal could reinvigorate the labor movement[2][3].
The success of this initiative depends on whether other major unions embrace the idea in the coming months and years[3].
My biggest fear is the first targets will be the “mildly well off, but basically top of the working class” because those are people that are visible and are your neighbors or people you know that can actually take a vacation, and the 0.1% will stoke that as a way of keeping the spotlight off of them.
Also he’s not in office. It’s kinda like getting upset if George Santos said something insane.
I get that people are working hard to find evidence for the “Israel = Nazis” narrative that’s currently trending, but kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel aren’t we?
Or, here’s another way of looking at it. Man who voluntarily left the ruling party of Israel and remains a part of Israel’s political class quotes Hitler. Not in the way we all quote Hitler to show that a point of view is wrong because Hitler held it, but rather in the way we quote someone like Nelson Mandela or Albert Einstein; to support an argument because we respect the source.
Meaning, Israeli politician respects Hitler.
Israel=Nazis is trending because the Israeli regime is genocidal, just like the Nazi regime that necessitated the creation of Israel, which is tragically ironic. This news piece is just garnish.
I see people constantly invoking the Nazis to make excuses for the actions of Hamas. The logic is “Israel is like Nazis therefore everything Hamas does it permissible.” It’s idiotic reasoning but it’s commonplace here.
This guy is similarly idiotic. If you’re outraged by what this guy is saying, look at the rationalizations people on here do everyday in support of Hamas. It’s the same eye for an eye kind of thinking. “Other side is Nazis, therefore we should do horrible things!”
Ex Likud members which used to be part of the Knesset that are now running their own party and saying this stuff on mainstream israeli TV channels does indicate something.
Unless they arrested this guy for saying literal Nazi shit on TV of course. Surely israel would do that right.
The Palestinian singer Dalal Abu Amneh was arrested briefly this week when she went to a police station to file a complaint after receiving hundreds of death threats. Rather than investigating her complaint, police detained her because of a comment she posted on Facebook, said her lawyer, Abir Bakr.
“They put cuffs on her hands and feet, and subjected her to insults and humiliation. They want to frighten people and teach them a lesson through Dalal,” Bakr said. After the start of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, Abu Amneh had posted “there is no victor but Allah” alongside a Palestinian flag on her Facebook page.
Invoking literal Hitler in a context that literally calls for literal Genocide on mainstream TV, does call into question if there are any double standards present here.
Now that antisemitism isn’t a problem anymore for israel either since they’re literally quoting Hitler it’s getting pretty obvious that israel is just doing Nazi Germany and white power.
See the difference between you and I is that I attribute the actions on October 7 to Hamas, not the Palestinian people. But you see any Israeli doing something wrong you use it to paint everyone in Israel as being that way.
You can split hairs about whether that’s antisemitism, but I don’t care. When you see one person of an ethnicity and/or religious group doing something wrong and then go on to say “they” do things like that, you’re showing what kind of person you are.
I tend to say Jew when when someone trends towards hating all Israelis, because hatred towards Israel is a common dog whistle for antisemites. After the “It’s ok to criticize Israel” meme went viral, many antisemites did a find and replace on “Jew” and changed it to “Israeli”. Those same antisemitic conspiracy theories most people would immediately denounced by most people before are now commonly spread simply because one word was changed. When I see those conspiracy theories espoused with one word different from the original, I bring it back to the original version. Why would I pretend that I don’t know the intent for these conspiracy theories?
Sometimes it’s important to take what you’re saying and put the word Jew in there. If what you’re saying about Israel suddenly becomes uncomfortable when “Israeli” is replaced with “Jew”, then you should consider more carefully what you’re saying. Someone says “wipe them off the map” they are talking about the ethnic cleansing of Jews after all. Or do you honestly believe that those that want Israel wiped off the map would displace Arab Israelis along with the Jewish Israelis? Come on…
The trick to avoid being a racist is introspection. Some consideration about whether your thinking is being guided by racism every now and then. If it’s uncomfortable to hear your rhetoric being applied to Jews rather than Israelis or “Zionists”, then maybe you should be checking how you’re thinking about things a little more.
If me considering your rhetoric as being against Jews makes you uncomfortable, then good. Your discomfort might lead to introspection.
You don’t seem to understand a lot about history with regards to Jews. Someone can consider themself to be a Jew if they are in the Judaism religion, and they can consider themself a Jew If one or both of their parents are Jews. Sometimes people that don’t consider themself to be a Jew can be considered a Jew by others even if just one of their Grandparents were a Jew.
All of these have been oppressed in the past. Oppression of Jews generally goes in cycles. Tolerance for a few generations, but then animosity builds up over time. Since Jews are a minority group they’re an easy target, and if a minority group achieves any measure of success people become jealous and a minority group having success runs counter to white supremacist ideology. Paranoia builds up, lots of conspiracy theories around Jews being successful because they used manipulation and took things that rightfully belonged to someone else.
Then a massacre happens and most people are horrified by it. So the majority of people go back to tolerating Jews again. But after a few generations people go back to the paranoia and jealous hatred against a minority group for achieving any kind of success.
The last cycle when antisemitism reached it’s maximum, there were no countries that offered sanctuary to Jews. I don’t think that will be the case on this cycle because while there’s few people left who personally witnessed the holocaust, most people in positions of power at least knew someone who was affected by it. But on the next cycle? What happens if the people that say October 7 was justified are the majority and are in positions of power in the west? The tankie pro-Palestinian protest kids of todady will likely be the MAGAs of tomorrow. It’s easy to see the potential of repeat of every country in the world refusing to offer sanctuary to Jews that are the victims of oppression.
And that’s why Israel exists. It’s not a religious state. It’s also not an ethno-state. It’s a state that exists to provide sanctuary for victims of antisemitism. A lot of people are uncomfortable with the existence of Israel because it’s a reminder of our failure to have any level of humanity towards Jews in the past.
I hope there’s a day where it isn’t necessary for there to be a country that has a Jewish majority to ensure there’s at least one country that offers sanctuary to Jews during times of peak antisemitism. But seeing attacks on synagogues and attacks on Jewish businesses in the west, we’re unfortunately not there yet.
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