Big Gulp, Meet Big Brother

[ApatheticNoMore]

Me, too. I think we would all agree some government controls are necessary (any true anarchists, here?)

Anarchists are interesting, real anarchy is on the left and I don't mind radical voluntary socialism, anti-hiearchy, egalitarianism etc. Perfectly ok with working toward that direction. But if you're looking for a model without the state tommorow - they definitely don't have it, you may look in vain forever. I have not seen it yet, though I have heard proposals for private police forces etc.. Now there are also those, not always true left anarchists, who will argue the state causes more harm than good. Even excluding all the cases of states butchering their own citizens, but counting things like Hiroshima, my goodness counting what this country has done to the middle east(!), it's very persuasive. Still if you have no state how do you address something like climate change? How do you address environmental crisis? Noone knows. With a government that believes none of those issues are real (look if anyone wanted to make a Republican party that wasn't this way, it might be one worth voting for, but we simply don't have that now) how do you address that type of crisis? Who knows. With a so called liberal administration that gives lipservice but seems to sell out those issues in practice (in climate talks etc.) how do you address that type of crisis? Noone knows that either . Join Bill McKibben's movement is the best I have ....

I actually agree with this, mostly. I do believe some powers that are in the states domain should be federal simply because this is such a huge, populated complicated country, nothing like the founding fathers knew, or probably could even imagine. Education, for instance, should be mandated at the federal level. If we left it up to the states only, well, then the education of our nation would be subject to local school boards who just might decide that science isn't so important, or who really needs math beyond adding and subtracting, or no one really needs to learn how to work computers.

It's not the first thing that I'd say rock bottom needs to be federalized. What is? Environmental regulations, because the climate isn't containable to state boundaries, because destroying the oceans isn't containable to state boundaries, because genetically modified organisms are not containable to state boundaries, because even pollution isn't containable to state boundaries and L.A. smog winds up in Colorado etc.. That's minimum standards, I am very happy for states to exceed minimum standards, like California does, proud of California this way (even if in general it's not a well-run state, still proud of this).

Now I'm all for local experiments or implementation of programs and charters, and fast tracking proven successful programs locally and hopefully nationally, but the standards should be uniform throughout the country. We need a well educated populace to move forward in this modern world, and really, better educated people in W. Virginia will benefit me in the long term.

I want educated people. I think school boards that want to eliminate the teaching of evolution are harmful to an extreme degree. Ban banning evolution and that's not a bad idea I mean really are there words strong enough for those fools! I don't however particularly trust the federal government being in charge of education in general. And by the way if you talk policies like No Child's Left-Behind, good teachers, the BEST teachers, the one's who you know by talking to them really taught kids to think, quit the profession over that law!!! So hey we'll have more automatons graduating, I can't wait. And the federal government in general has proven itself corrupt, at times a wholy owned subsidiary of corporate power. I know it shouldn't be that way, this *should* be fought, but that is a concession to what reality is now too. I don't want the corporatist totalitarian murder state (what is the war-making body of THIS federal government is) in charge of education. They have no real interest in people who can think, of people who can question their agenda right down to the core. They have an interest only in workers who can earn enough to be milked for labor (for their corporate paymasters) and taxes (for the government apparatus itself). WI was interesting, it was people seeming to willingly vote to destroy their own schools, I mean really, you really don't want to pay teachers well? But time foretells the future with accuracy, certainly not I, I just take my best guess.

The problem with all existing health care reforms is they are trying to reform a corrupt system (and lets face it insurance oligopolies are a corrupt system - near completley so). I don't think the outcomes of trying to do that will be good. Worse than doing nothing? Quite possibly. I can't say. Remember doing nothing is just another variant of that corrupt system (insurance oligopolies).