I don’t know about the other issues, but this strike isn’t bipartisan at all. It’s progressive Democrats vs. progressive Democrats. It makes it not easy for outsiders to understand. It may well be a cooperative strike thing, where both the district and the union are working together for the same goals, and they may both see a strike as beneficial for whatever their shared goals are. I’m not really sure, as I’m also an outsider.
Well, I’m not going to learn their language, am I?
/s
7 Likes
I’m not alone in thinking that sounded like bullshit, then. That statement really makes no sense, does it?
7 Likes
Nope, not alone at all and no sense whatsoever there.
7 Likes
“Mass Migration” is a term used exclusively by white supremacists for any form of immigration, legal or otherwise.
The kind of crap which ignores the fact that:
-
immigrants use far less public resources than they contribute towards and
-
aren’t eligible for virtually all forms of public assistance with the exception of those to keep people from being public hazards.
10 Likes
In this context, certainly. Nativists and bigots obsessed with the issue also never stop to think about how their own countries might be culpable in regard to contributing to the cause of the mass migration.
7 Likes
On the major issues it’s a bog-standard labour dispute over salary increases and work conditions (mainly class size), with the LAUSD crying poor.
However, underlying the dispute is a broader ideological difference between what might be called progressives and privatisers as to how public K-12 schools should be funded and how that funding should be allocated. It is not political partisanship as defined by disputes between and within the Democratic and Republican parties, but rather a deeper ideological partisanship reflected in key issues.
Cory and the article he linked to cover some of those issues: the charter school model; the persistence of segregation in public education; austerity disguised as efficiency; teach-to-the-test metrics that are more about juking the stats; worker (i.e. teacher) participation in decision-making and policy formuation alongside management (i.e. administrators). All of these ideologically based issues inform the question of whether the school district can meet the teachers’ core demands regarding salary, hours, and work conditions.
The teachers tend to take the progressive position, mainly because they’re still focused on schools as educational institutions with societal outcomes rather than businesses with financial profit outcomes. The LAUSD tends to take the privatisation position, mainly because they’re mostly Third Way establishment types who accept the neoliberal consensus without question.
Meanwhile, “free”-market fundies, Xtianists, Nativist anti-immigrant bigots, white supremacists, and anti-statists tend to side with the privatisers, but push them toward a more extreme model to serve their hateful and selfish short-sighted agendas. In an ideal world, their voices would not be a part of a serious debate like this.
This labour dispute, along with other teachers’ strikes, is a vignette in the larger narrative about the country’s other public institutions – health insurance, welfare, low-income housing, etc. The reason public education is the sector where there is true pushback is because the progressives are represented by a strong and politically/financially powerful union made up of particularly well-educated workers who see their profession as a vocation. Of all the enemies of American movement conservatism, educators are the most effective.
12 Likes
No, it’s correct, because lower fees are helpful to richer students who will be able to pay them off even quicker.
It won’t be as much help to lower paid graduates, many of who will never repay any significant level of student loan. It depends on the financial rules around repayment of student loans (length of the term before forgiveness, interest rates, proportion of salary to be used for payment.)
However this is all off the topic because the danger of UK student loans is that they are a financial time-bomb which will start to in about 27 years, when the first cohort of not-fully repaying students arrives at the age when their loans are paid off by the government instead.
All of the above is off the topic of this thread, too.
@Yose also neglects the fact that US residents without papers DO, in fact, pay taxes.
10 Likes
As amusing as the sarcasm is, i’d be wary of your post being used as ‘evidence’ by people that truly hold such views… 
1 Like
They also like to ignore how much immigration improves the economy with things like maintaining markets and a workforce that would be decimated by demographic decline, entrepreneurial growth and foreign investment in the country.
Its all about keeping the country majority white for them.
5 Likes
Because Privatization allows for legalized segregation and a host of other forms of discrimination in schools on the public dime.
6 Likes
This is the US: student debt is for most borrowers never forgiven. Nearly impossible to be discharged in bankruptcy.
4 Likes
You DO know hispanic doesn’t equal undocumented, yeah? Especially with young people who most likely were BORN here and have every legal right to a public education as any other citizen or legal resident.
Even if true, which I do not believe it to be…so what… The world is not going to end because child gets an education.
No, only if you willfully refuse to listen, because you think the “democrat party” is your mortal enemy…
9 Likes
No matter what I say, they’ll believe that any way. So, no, I will not “tone it down” in the hopes that they might see me as an equal partner in shaping our world, because they will almost NEVER believe me to be that.
10 Likes
It is a dead accurate statement when you recognize that the majority of Democrat reps and Senators (and prezzies) have more or less adopted Reagan’s policies. You do not see the Democratic mainstream nationalizing privatized sectors but rather privatizing the public sector (e.g., charter schools), you do not see them investing in the pubic sphere, you do not see their acts of congress enshrining public sector rights of collective bargaining including strikes, you do not see them bringing back the estate tax, you do not see them implementing Keynesian policies (remember Nixon’s “We are all Keynesians now?”), you do not see wealth transfer as a mainline Democratic platform.
You seem to be using “the center” as though that is not a target that has been bee-lining it towards the right for decades.
6 Likes
Fair enough.
thought it was worth pointing out just in case 
Oh absolutely, I said that very clearly in my post. There must be quite a few who are illegal aliens, but I would guess that the majority are US-born, US citizens, but who knows, they don’t publish any statistics about that because it’s a sensitive subject. And regardless, Plyler v Doe, which I mentioned, says that immigration status doesn’t matter for school enrollment. It’s a non-issue. I said all that really clearly.
I never said or implied otherwise. I said that education has consequences for everyone. Schools aren’t in the business of immigration enforcement and are bound by Plyler v Doe (which I referenced) to educate everyone regardless of immigration status. What are you reading into my post?
Someone else was saying that this issue is about giving more education resources to rich whites, and I said, no it isn’t, there are almost no whites, and certainly very few rich whites, in LAUSD. This issue, whatever it’s about, isn’t about schools for rich whites. I don’t even see how this is about segregation, because there aren’t enough whites (less than 10%) in LAUSD to even have segregation. The real segregation that happens is with whites putting their children in private schools, and whites moving out of LAUSD. This strike can’t touch either of those issues.
Huh? Don’t even understand what you’re talking about. I just said, factually, that the union and the LAUSD are both controlled by progressive Democrats. What am I supposed to listen to? Are you suggesting that there’s a secret Republican force that’s in control of either the teachers’ union or LAUSD? Because that’s quite surprising news to me if there is and I would certainly be interested in any evidence about that…
Only in obscure papers I guess… you know, like the LA Times:
Yet here you seem to be, wringing your hands over the issue…
Benefits…
Because of white flight, generally speaking.
The people making arguments on either side. This is public policy, which means, you are very much involved. You are not an outsider, even if you don’t have children in public schools. How are you an outsider to that, even if you’re not in the same political party, a teacher, or in a union? You’re the one saying that you’re an outsider to these problems…
4 Likes
