posted
I was just happy that Rick Perry didn't win a majority. I laughed in his speech when he said the people of Texas had spoken. Yeah, look at the other 61% who didn't want you in office. Oh well, it was to be expected.
Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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Could be worse. Granholm won the Michigan Governor race. I was a little shocked to hear that even my Grandma wanted her to lose. Glad I won't be a permanent resident of Michigan for another 12 years. Maybe by then they will have someone that can fix what she mucked up. I'm nominating Barney Fife for the next one. Posts: 2208 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Stan the man: Could be worse. Granholm won the Michigan Governor race. I was a little shocked to hear that even my Grandma wanted her to lose. Glad I won't be a permanent resident of Michigan for another 12 years. Maybe by then they will have someone that can fix what she mucked up. I'm nominating Barney Fife for the next one.
Mucked up? She walked into a multi billion dollar budget deficit on her first day on the job, and since then she has eliminated it. She's also brought in millions of dollars in investments, and thousands of new jobs to Michigan.
Doing all that, in SPITE of the thousands of jobs that the auto companies are slashing, and an opposition state Congress is admirable.
Dick Devos would have screwed us over entirely. He wanted to cut 4 billion dollars in taxes, and raise spending by billions, with absolutely no plans to pay for it. Typical Republican.
I'm thrilled Granholm not only won, she crushed Devos, and Democrats took over the State House, giving her a much better change of pushing through legislation that will help Michigan.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Hmmm, maybe all that change was seen over your way. Because we sure haven't seen it ours. Nice of her to take care of things just one little area at a time. Meanwhile there are ghost towns rising up all around the thumb area. All down to Flint area too. But then, the thing I would like to see, an end to the unions. But I know that one isn't going to happen. Those new jobs don't pay much. I've done my search on that one. There's no way I am going to work for that low of pay. I make more where I am at, but I retire in 12 years.
Posts: 2208 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Granholm is working on starting up small businesses, she's bringing in biological research places, renewable energy places are opening up all over the state, advanced manufacturing all over the state.
I'm sorry that the thumb isn't doing well right now, but given the crisis the state has been in for the last couple years, and will be in for the next couple, she's doing a remarkable job.
And I assure you, that no idea Devos wouldn't have done a better job. He would have wrecklessly cut taxes, and then would have been forced to slash services to pay for it in the end, or we'd be stuck with ANOTHER deficit. He had no ideas, his only plan was to cut taxes and beat up on Granholm.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I have an obnoxious snarky response. I just had to tell you instead of actually posting the response. See my restraint. Be proud of me. I might actually come back and post it in the morning. I will try to behave. Really.
Posts: 1319 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Stan, it's not Granholm's fault steel and the Big Three are failing. That's their own fault for not being competative, foreign goverments subsidising their industries (in reguards to steel), and said foreign countries using near slave labor (with our technology that we gave them) that we cannot compete with and expect to maintain the current middle class.
Part of the problem is that we've created our own monster. The US created the IMF, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization in an attempt of enlightend self intrest: to elevate the rest of the world to keep the Soviet empire at bay and for people to buy our products, thus keeping the US and the West's economies strong. It worked, the Soviet Union collapsed...but there are side effects. We've created all industrialised nations that can build stuff as well as we can but with no unions and half the time no human rights. Now we have a situation where it is cheeper to build overseas and spend all that money shipping back over here.
If we allow our industries to fail we need to replace them with something else. I think Granholm has good ideas on a backup to the Big Three and steel: high tech. Of course we want to save our critical industries, for national security reasons as well as economically, but if they do collapse further we need to find something else.
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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You know, the whole "ashamed to be from Texas" thing does NOT indicate a worldly point-of-view. It's very Gatsby and nouveau riche to wish to hide your roots. The truly great are like Ender - don't conform to the game, be so good the game changes to fit you.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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It's easy to feel out of step when you're a liberal in the Deep South. Don't let it make you bitter, and don't forget that these people are your neighbors, like it or not. If possible, when you get older, spend a few years in a more liberal state so you can see the flip side of the picture.
I'm from Alabama, and I'm living in Massachusetts right now. What a different political world! But it has its bad points, too, like people expressing surprise that I'm very liberal, just because of where I'm from. My husband has a somewhat noticable Southern accent, whereas I don't. He gets people assuming he's stupid, or something. Sad.
posted
The perception that accent=dumb is amazing to me. I can't believe people who pride themselves on being open-minded can be so ignorant. It makes me think that there actually aren't that many truly open-minded people - just different flavors of provincial.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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I'm not exactly sure how destroying the unions would generate higher paying jobs.
What is the chant that those marching in pickets on non-union sites chant? "Half the work, double the pay. That's why unions half to stay."
Unions serve a useful purpose when it comes to establishing safety regulations and a basic salary floor. Unfortunately, many are now nothing more than excuses for legal blackmail and extortion.
Where I live, schools are organized by district as opposed to county. Each district has its own contract with the teachers union. Every year teachers from a handful of districts go on strike.
They make an offer and say give us this or we're going on strike. The township makes a counter offer. The union says give us what we asked for or we're going on strike. The school year starts and one of two things happen. a) the teachers go on strike b) the teachers go to work but randomly decide not to show up several days a week and they don't announce what days until 7:30 that morning, meaning parents are stuck finding places for their kids to go while at work.
Once this goes on for a few days or weeks, the teachers are called to the county courthouse in alphabetical order and asked if they will stop their illegal strike. Once they say no, the court fines them for every day they're out of work.
Before the judge gets to the end of the alphabet, pressure from parents aimed at the school district gets the teachers the contract they want. The union pays the fines for the teachers who were previously called; if the judge forbids that, those teachers amazingly get bonuses at some point in the future that equal the fine but is unconnected to the strike.
All this works because bargaining as a group in a public situation means you have unfair leverage. In my example, its even worse because teachers unions continue to sell the lie that teachers are massively overpaid, even though the median teacher salary in the United States is just under $50,000, approximately $7,000 more than the median salary for the entire country.
Back to your original question, it's not all about everyone having a high paying job. It's about rewarding those who do the job well. Teachers (in this example) who excell at what they do should get the most money they can. There should be a bidding war for their services. Teachers who underperform or whose students constanty fail, shouldn't be protected by a union more interested in keeping someone in a job they don't deserve than making sure children get a quality education.
Posts: 50 | Registered: Jan 2003
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Remind me to change my name to Zebulon Zyre if I ever decide to become a public school teacher. Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:Originally posted by pfresh85: I was just happy that Rick Perry didn't win a majority. I laughed in his speech when he said the people of Texas had spoken. Yeah, look at the other 61% who didn't want you in office. Oh well, it was to be expected.
It must be a Texas thing. Even that's not as bad as Dubya's "mandate" and "political capital" speeches.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: *wrinkles forehead* I'm trying to imagine someone saying, say, Rudy Guliani's faults were a "New York" thing.
They weren't?
Speaking as a New Yorker (albeit a temporarily displaced one) who generally dislikes Giuliani... they darn well are. (He might be a jerk, but he's our kind of jerk.)
Posts: 884 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I wasn't pointing out anyone's general faults. I was pointing to 2 specific examples of the same fault and extrapolating for mild humor.
Both are from Texas and both spoke of their narrow win as if it were some huge landslide and grand mandate from the people. Goes along with that whole "Everything is bigger in Texas" thing.
In the end, though, it was just a joke. Don't read too much into it.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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*explains* I'm sensitive about the Texas thing. I went to a job interview when I first got here when where the interviewer, when he noted that I had lived in Texas, said "I'm sorry." I know it was supposed to be a joke, but wow, was that a miscalculation. Matt thought it was hilarious because I was offended all the way home.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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Yeah, I assumed it was just a joke from the start, Karl. In fact, once you mentioned it and I thought about it, I laughed.
As far as what I said earlier, I wanted to clarify so that I don't get painted one way or the other. When I spoke negatively about Perry's win (particularly the percentage against him), it wasn't out of spite or anything. When I was saying it in my head as I typed it, it was sort of a joking tone. Personally I don't care. The governor of Texas has almost zero power in Texas. My whole point (that I was trying to convey in a joking tone, but I think I failed at that) is that there were many people (conservatives like me among them) who didn't vote for Perry, and so I found it rather funny that he was claiming that the people had spoken. When you can't even get full support from your own party, it's hard to say the people have spoken.
EDIT: Katharina, I'm sensitive about the whole thing as well. When I tell people I'm from the south, they seem to conjure up a lot of stereotypes (some just funny, some just outright aggravating). I know this is probably true of a lot of places in the country (I mean stereotypes are prevalent), but it doesn't help when the state we're from seems to have a lot of negative stereotypes hooked onto it.
Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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Well, I'm pleased with Massachusetts at the moment for being open mided enough to vote a black man to it's highest office by a wide margin. Deval Patrick is a very charismatic man, who he seems to genuinely want to govern on the behalf of the state, not just the African American community, or the left wing. Which is why he won the race, I think. And I don't forsee Alabama anyone who isn't white into office for a while yet, unfortunately.
But yeah, some New Englanders have a different set of prejudices. There are folks who live up the stereotype of New England intellectual elitists, much to my dismay.
[edited to specify that *some* New Englanders have prejudices ]
posted
I am not from Texas and I am just waiting for the day I get my degree and can get out of here. I did read that Stephen Colbert from the time he was a kid worked on eliminating his southern accent because he didn't people to assume he was stupid. As far as teachers, there is a lot of regional variation in that average. My husband was one and he didn't receive anywhere near the average starting salary. His brother, who teaches the same subject he did but in a different state, got like 20,000 a year more starting. When he tries to pull the poor teacher card, we find it really obnoxious.
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Ashamed to be a Texan?! Outrageous, when we have this wonderful wonderful news:
quote:Nick Lampson, a Democrat and former congressman, won Mr. DeLay’s former district in suburban Houston over the Republican write-in candidate, Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, a Houston councilwoman.
Everyone pretty much expected Perry to win, but I really didn't see a Democrat taking DeLay's district. The people out there are about as conservative as it comes. Yay Texans making the right (that is correct) choices!
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Objectivity: All this works because bargaining as a group in a public situation means you have unfair leverage. In my example, its even worse because teachers unions continue to sell the lie that teachers are massively overpaid, even though the median teacher salary in the United States is just under $50,000, approximately $7,000 more than the median salary for the entire country.
I have to question your numbers. According to the NSF, the median salary (2003) for all teachers in the US including colleges and Universities was $42,000. The median salary for pre-college teachers was $41,000.
In the same year, the median annual salary for college graduates (and all teachers must be college graduates) was $50,000. The median for BS/BA degree holders was $47,000 and the median for MS/MA degree holders was $54,000. The median for those with doctoral and professional degrees was still higher.
No matter how you cut it, teachers are still among the lowest paid college graduates out there.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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"The perception that accent=dumb is amazing to me. I can't believe people who pride themselves on being open-minded can be so ignorant"
The problem is not so much accents (although there are some we should get rid of on aesthetic grounds) but dialects. To illustrate, my headmaster, for one, has a definate southern accent, but speaks in a standard English dialect. To me, at least, he sounds intellegent.
Some dialect words do not bother me at all, "Y'all" is fine, but is becoming more uncommon among my generation (we are the "you guys" generation) and I admit to saying "whole 'nother," even though it makes little sense. I do, however, draw the line at "ain't."
"The truly great are like Ender"
Who also hid his roots (for good reason.) I don't hide my roots, anyone who asks me will be told that I was born in and live in San Antonio. That does not mean that I can't think that San Antonio is a poorly run city or that Texas is a poorly run state. For one thing, both are rather evidently true. If you come down here, I can show you roads that have been under constant "repair" for my entire life and are not scheduled for completion until after I go away to college.
"you think Kinky is a better candidate than Strayhorn? How?"
Madam Strayhorn can't laugh at herself. And she is at least as silly as Kinky. He just knows it.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: No matter how you cut it, teachers are still among the lowest paid college graduates out there.
A lot of teachers are also forced to support their classrooms out of their own pockets. One of my best friends is a middle school teacher, and she has to go to Kinko's just to photocopy exams.
Edit: Pel, "ain't" is a perfectly valid word unless you're a diehard prescriptivist, and furthermore, [url= http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ain%27t]dates back to 1706.[/url] A southern accent doesn't indicate lack of intelligence, any more than a northeastern accent indicates smug condescension. Although you seem to be doing fine at the latter using nothing but good ol', accent-free text.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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Pel, most people think their states are poorly-run. Most people hate road construction. I mean, Florida has some of the best roads in the country, and there always seems to be construction on I-4.
quote:Madam Strayhorn can't laugh at herself. And she is at least as silly as Kinky. He just knows it.
I see no evidence that Strayhorn is incapable of laughing at herself. She just hasn't made a career out of it. Further, I don't think that's a very good indicator of how well they would fulfill the duties of governor.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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"'ain't' is a perfectly valid word unless you're a diehard prescriptivist,"
It is never used in writing except to record dialogue and it is written English which is invariably used by descriptivists. And not just any written English but only from a few sources.
Thus, the split infinitive is allowed for by its by many great writers (Shaw for one wrote a defense of it.)
The same cannot be said for "ain't."
Finally, I am hardly alone in my doubts as to the validity of "ain't." No dictionary, to my knowledge, includes it without the note: "colloquial" or "dialect."
No of this is to say that "ain't" will not mature into a perfectly valid word, but it is not now standard English.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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"Further, I don't think that's a very good indicator of how well they would fulfill the duties of governor."
The duties of govenor is the State of Texas consist of doing what the Lt. Govenor (actualy a far more powerful posistion in Texas) tells you to do.
And wearing a suit.
The Govenor in Texas functions much the way Presidents do in most Republics, as a figurehead representing the State. Actual power is invested elsewhere.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
If this is the first thing that's made you ashamed of being from Texas then you must be very thick skinned indeed.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote: The Govenor in Texas functions much the way Presidents do in most Republics, as a figurehead representing the State. Actual power is invested elsewhere.
I am a lifetime resident of Texas and am politically involved. I am well aware of the role of the Governor of Texas. That does not undermind what I said.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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I'm not exactly sure how destroying the unions would generate higher paying jobs.
Bob, I'm sorry that connection was made. I didn't intend for that. Good question though. However, no answer. After working shipyards for a few years, and growing up in MI, I just plain hate unions. I talk with guys over here at the Groton base all the time that work here as union workers. Even they don't like it. Because the union doesn't do anything for them. It only supports those that should be fired. People such as those that sleep on the job.
I will say that I do appreciate how Lyr and Telp worded their posts. But then, I didn't expect anything less.
However, I'm still failing to see how things improved. We are still in a single state recession, unemployment is at 7.1%, and we were the only state not hit by a hurricane last summer to lose jobs. If she has a plan, she better use it quick, because the big three sure as heck aren't helping. Could it be that the unemployment rate went down because people moved out of state? Possibly, I don't know. Honda would have moved in to build some factories, but they didn't. Why? Because it is too costly to generate wealth in the state. Tax cuts, please give some. Mid-MI is paying taxes up the yin yang. DeVos, of course wasn't campaining any better than her, so maybe it's all in fair slander on each other. And yes, I really would have rather voted for Barney Fife than either of those two.
Posts: 2208 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:Originally posted by pH: *shifty eyes*.....andTexasstillisn'ttheSouth! *flee!*
-pH
Funny, I've known very few people who would call themselves Texans who would disagree with this statement.
Posts: 1368 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:Originally posted by LisB1121: Well, I'm pleased with Massachusetts at the moment for being open mided enough to vote a black man to it's highest office by a wide margin.
Yeah, but they sure are sexist, voting down the female candidate by such a large margin
On the subject of political open-mindedness, I was completely unstartled to find that, post-election, MA remains the most lopsided state legistlature in the country (87.5% Democrat). No one else is even close (RI and Hawaii are next at 83.2% and 82.9% respectively). The most lopsided Republican dominated legistlatures are (no surprise here), Idaho at 75.2% followed by Utah at 74.0%.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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El Paso and West Texas are South Western South Texas and San Antonio are Mexico Norte North Texas is baja Oklahoma Austin is little San Fransisco Houston and DFW are were you go after you die if you've been very bad
For what it's worth, I am slighly offended every time I see Texas put as part of the South. San Antonio is 58% Hispanic, 32% Anglo and 7% African American. More Southwestern than South in demographics, né?
[Edited to add] San Antonio was essentialy integrated in 1945 without any race riots.
As for the climate, we are in the fairly unique posistion of being semi-arid (southwestern or sub-tropical (southern) depending on which way the wind is blowing.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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