Chicago teachers go on strike
The ostensible reason is COVID, of course, the all-purpose excuse. The real reason – IMHO – is they have gotten very very accustomed to just phoning it in (that is, computering it in), and being paid for it. So why would they want to return?
Even leftist mayor Lori Lightfoot isn’t happy with this. In retaliation, she locked the teachers out of their Zoom class access and says they will not be paid till they return.
How many people are weeping for them? Very few, I think.
Schools in most big cities will be remote in a day or two if they aren’t already. California is starting their inevitable freakout about cases with all kinds of cancellations so I’m sure schools will be next.
Remote school is not school.
One of the very few good results from the hysteria, over the last two years, brought about by China’s having unleashed the Wuhan-virus upon the world, is the exposure of the limitless corruption of the worthless teachers’ unions (not to mention the folly of the “public health establishment”). Many Americans still have fond memories of our public-school system (once, perhaps, the envy of the world); no longer can any rational person argue that K-12, run by the state, exists for anything other than the empowerment of the unions, the perpetuation of one-party (mis)rule by the Democrats, and the indoctrination of captive pupils into leftism and into “woke” insanity.
Mayor Lightfoot has to weigh the cost of losing Teacher Union support against the cost of losing low-and-middle income parent support.
Upper Income parents who almost totally support the Mayor have their kids in private schools. They only care about the tax burden the overfunded and vastly underperforming CPS imposes.
One of the things that annoys the hell out of me is people that say ‘my kid’s teacher thinks all this is stupid and they should be in person’. I have heard this countless times from many different people the last two years and I call BS on that. If there are so many of these teachers then they need to stand up to the union but that never happens.
This phenomenon is related to the ‘I hate congress but love my congressman’ line that so many people spout.
Something has to give. I think the Mayor has the upper hand unless Governor Pritzker steps in but he’s probably smart enough to stay out of it as there’s certainly no upside for him.
Meanwhile, I’m going to make a batch of popcorn and grab a beer while I watch the two leftists fight it out. Should make for an interesting time.
I just read that the leader of the teachers union is:
The avowed socialist who shut down Chicago schools today over COVID: Teachers union boss Jesse Sharkey, 52, has long flirted with anti-capitalist causes but ‘lives like the 1%’ and married daughter of millionaire Royal Caribbean Cruises CEO
If I owned a grocery store in Chicago, I would tell teachers they can come in my store and be around my employees when they get back in the classroom. That’s the issue right? Teachers fear getting Covid from the students, or so they claim. Then why must grocery store clerks and stockers run the risk of getting Covid from teachers shopping for food for their families? They certainly shouldn’t go to a restaurant and expect to be waited.
I don’t really agree with these measures, but then I still work and go into work as needed. Yes, I don’t always need to be in the office, but my wife is a RN and while some of them phone it in too, she cannot. In fact, sometimes she even has to treat patients she knows have Covid, and then she comes home to me. So I get the risk, but I know people very close to me that have to take the risk, as do I.
Alas, my local school district figured this stuff out. Chicago can have their socialism as long as they stay in Chicago.
j e,
Not to quibble but it is not the teacher’s unions that are worthless but their membership. Union leadership is elected.
Currently, the great majority of teachers in America at heart are effectively communist activists. An even higher percentage of academia are so. That ideology was not forced upon them, they embraced it. They pursued that career not to teach but to indoctrinate.
If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightly consider it an act of war.
–Glenn T. Seaborg (1983)
https://www2.lbl.gov/Publications/Seaborg/risk.htm
_______________________________________
Seaborg was a 1951 Nobel Prize co-winner for discovering transuranic elements and later an advisor on science education.
Things have been going south for a long time. But like the Hemingway quote, its bankruptcy happened slowly at first, then suddenly.
I see this as a seminal event. Finally, the voters have recognized they have the power to demand accountability, and the leverage to force the issue. Lightfoot would only do this if her advisors had made it clear to her she has no other choice. Is this a Jericho moment?
I hope it is a Jericho moment indeed. Jesse Sharkey is a raging egomaniac and is displaying for all to see that the CTU does not care about the students which falls in line with the definition of a union. IMO.
@Huxley:
So that’s what Seaborg did. Used to see his name along with a whole bunch of other board member worthies inside the front cover of National Geographic magazines when I were a lad.
There were giants in the earth in those days.
Wasn’t so long ago.
It’s Chicongo. Who cares?
I seem to recall that ca. 1987 the Chicago school district was rated by some agency as being in the bottom 1% of the nation’s school districts in terms of observable student performance. Will they really be injured by lowering their exposure to those bloody clots?
Again, primary and secondary schooling is a fee-for-service activity which appears naturally on the open market. There’s no good reason to provide it via public agency accept in circumstances where the population is of sufficiently low density or the service sufficiently odd that the market can support only one dominant provider. Private schools – some voucher funded, some tuition funded – should be the order of the day. Regents’ examinations can provide for quality control.
Zaphod:
Certainly not you.
As far as the rest of us bleeding-heart conservatives go, I know it’s an odd and stupid concept to you, but we care about children of all races.
I guess you can take the Zaphod out of South Africa, but you can’t take the South Africa out of Zaphod.
By the way, for your edification, Chicago has the following population breakdown: people categorized as white are 45% of the population, people categorized as black are 33%, and people categorized as Hispanic of any race are 29%.
But of course we’re talking here about the public school population. The racial breakdown is as follows: “46.8% Hispanic/Latino, 36.0% Black or African American, 10.9% White, 4.3% Asian or Asian Pacific Islander.”
I guess you can take the Zaphod out of South Africa, but you can’t take the South Africa out of Zaphod.
The South Africa business is yarn too.
The Boer government in South Africa sank ample sums into the schooling of the non-white population. Arguably insufficient, but it was something. About 2/3 of the Bantu population was literate by 1980.
@Neo:
Go build a school in Gaza 🙂
You’re a partisan of a State which has first class citizens and everyone else.. and which enforces separation between ethnic groups for the good of all. What’s not to like? The Seffricans never built giant concrete walls around the Black townships. More’s the pity. But one rule for thee, another for me.
Oh… and who worked with each other on their secret nuke programs and sold each other arms? Utter hypocrisy.
I still don’t give a damn about Chicago. Big dysfunctional cities like this are are lost causes in the USA.
You should know. You’ve made sure not to be in one.
There’s no coming back for Chicago. Not in the lifespan of anyone commenting here, or that of their grandchildren. You know it in your bones. We all do. It’s just one of those things. Best accept it. Any physical, emotional, financial energy best expended elsewhere where it can make a difference.
It’s at the point where the more dysfunction the better. Like an osmosis membrane you want it to expel the salvageable people and ingest the degenerates still attracted by the chaos.
GB & je
Let me also add “incompetent” & (as Onslow in Keeping Up Appearances used to be described) “work-shy & bone idle” to your descriptors to a great many of those filling or not filling American classroom teacher positions.
But with regard to Mayor Groot vs the Unions…Let them fight!
It is truly amazing and fantastic how much a troll from Hong Kong “knows” about America, Chicago, Appalachia, and all the people who live here. And the rest of the world too, just wait he’ll school ya.
Such a waste of an education. A sad case.
The breakdown of the population 5-18 by race is as follows:
Black (w/ black hispanic): 33.8%
White hispanic: 24.3%
White anglo: 19%
Miscellaneous races (including hispanics among them): 12.9%
Multi-racial (incl hispanics among them): 5%
Oriental / East Indian: 4.7%
aboriginal: 0.3%
The four categories of the hispanic population sum to 40.9% of the total.
John Guilfoyle,
Incompetence is a given. As rejection of fundamental realities is woven into the basic premises of collectivist ideologies, competence is a bar far too high for their advocates.
Mastery of trades is still possible. But in the economic sphere where supply and demand reign and in the governing principles of social interactions, they utterly and predictably fail.
Zaphod,
“You’re a partisan of a State which has first class citizens and everyone else.. and which enforces separation between ethnic groups for the good of all.”
To what society do you refer?
Zaphod:
Go build a school in Gaza? That’s all you’ve got for an analogy to public schools in Chicago – part of my own country?
Although actually, there would be little wrong with building a school in Gaza if I could decide what would be taught there.
Yes, Chicago has a high crime rate, but its recent sharp rise has been mostly because of its ridiculously leftist administration letting people out of prison. And most of the people victimized by that high crime rate are black people who are doing no one any harm – many of them children.
But of course Zaphod doesn’t care – because Zaphod only cares about Zaphod and things that directly harm Zaphod. No man except Zaphod is an island.
What you don’t know about America – which is a lot – seems to be exceeded only by what you don’t know about Israel. Israel does not “enforce separation” between its Jewish and Arab populations. Or do you buy the “Israel is an apartheid state” leftist propaganda along with all the other untrue stuff you believe?
Israel’s wall is a border wall between two countries and/or areas taken after a defensive war on Israel’s part (the exact borders being somewhat disputed), by the way, and was constructed in order to stop terrorist vicious attacks emanating from those areas into Israel proper.
There is zero analogy to Chicago.
You must love the South Africa of your youth a lot, because you seem to want to turn the US into a facsimile of it…
Geoffrey Britain:
Zaphod thinks he’s describing Israel.
Or maybe he doesn’t really even think he’s actually describing Israel, maybe he just thinks it’s a fun and seemingly nasty/clever thing to say about Israel.
Art Deco:
That’s very different from the statistics I saw, which had white Anglo at 33%, which was the largest single racial category.
Art Deco:
By writing what I wrote about Zaphod and South Africa, I was not referring to anything connected with the schooling or literacy of South African black people and government policy about the education of black people in that country. I was referring to Zaphod’s general racial attitudes, especially about black people but about race in general, its meaning and significance, and what to do about racial conflict and racial differences.
Well, my immediate opinion is that if this strike has any chance of somehow, via some kind of crazy knock-on effect cascade, resulting in revocation of the name change once foisted upon the Sears Tower, I’d take that as a win. It’s one of my minor life ambitions to see that happen.
(Also if the Berghoff would return and Faber’s come back to Union Station, and MSI were to bring back that nifty petroleum industry exhibit… but one thing at a time.)
Just out of curiosity, and no criticism implied, but don’t you find this trailing-after business, exhausting and unrewarding?
Where’s the benefit for you, in all this?
I was reading a thread yesterday where a lot of this was going on, and a new arrival who said he was expecting reasoned exchanges expressed real exasperation with what he experienced instead. And if I understood him right, it was over these kinds of pointless bickers.
Is there a point?
It’s Neo’s site of course, so ….
Zaphod,
“You’re a partisan of a State which has first class citizens and everyone else.. and which enforces separation between ethnic groups for the good of all.”
The Kesset has Arab members. Some of whom publicly desire Israel’s extermination. The only ethnic separation that is enforced is self-imposed. Disproving “first class citizens and everyone else”.
“The Seffricans never built giant concrete walls around the Black townships.”
White South Africans didn’t have murderous terrorist groups supported by wealthy nations blowing up innocent children for 50+ years.
“But one rule for thee, another for me.”
Only in your fevered imagination does neo engage in double standards. Consciously or not, you are engaged in Bearing False Witness.
“Oh… and who worked with each other on their secret nuke programs and sold each other arms? Utter hypocrisy.”
Are you referring to the U.S. and Israel? If so, I’ll be happy to defend that entirely valid, non-hypocritical collaboration.
“I still don’t give a damn about Chicago. Big dysfunctional cities like this are are lost causes in the USA.”
It’s not Chicago with which you should be concerned but the innocents trapped within it. They deserve your compassion, which appears to be in short supply.
Our big dysfunctional cities are run by dysfunctional people who are elected by the deluded, the gullible and the ignorant. Dysfunction is by definition, unsustainable. Reality will eventually force reconsideration by them of dysfunctional policies.
@GB:
“Disproving “first class citizens and everyone else”.
Are you Jewish? Are you married to a Jew? If no to both questions, just you try emigrating there. It’s an ethno-state. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Seriously nothing wrong with that. More like that please.
“White South Africans didn’t have murderous terrorist groups supported by wealthy nations blowing up innocent children for 50+ years.”
Actually they did. White South Africans don’t own and control all the media in your country and never did and therefore you wouldn’t know.
Rhodesians could tell you more, too.
South Africa and Israel cooperated on their twin secret nuclear programs and sold each other arms. You didn’t know? Of course you didn’t know. See above para.
DNW:
Write another tome. You are paid by the word, or what is in it for your cold flinty heart?
But it is a curiosity about your complete indifference to Z’s excesses. Are you one of his super secret fan boys?
@John Guilfoyle.
+1 for the Onslow reference. I knew a Hyacinth once, so I could never binge watch KUA.
For the Ten Millionth Time:
I have zero problem with Israel and its existence as an ethno-state for the convenience of Jews before others. More countries just like it for the rest of us, please. I don’t give a damn how they got it and I don’t give a damn how they hang on to what they have got. That’s their business and good luck to them. What I won’t do is be a naive idiot and crap on about how the getting and keeping it was and is all unicorns and ponies and candy floss.
What I do have problems with are the way that the US allows itself to be dragged around half-way around the planet acting in the interests of Israel rather than the USA and, you know, actual Americans. Israel is perfectly capable of looking after itself as it has demonstrated over and over again.
And I also have a problem with the ‘Conservative’ tendency to see it as some kind New (err, Old) Jerusalem City on a Hill Light Unto the Nations type nonsense.
It’s just a State. It thinks and acts like any other sensible sane state and acts purely in its OWN INTERESTS. Which more often than not for any state involves a degree of cynicism and unpleasantness. Ask Jonathan Pollard. You can’t ask the Russians spying for US that Pollard shopped to Israel who Israel shopped on to the Soviet Union for various favours involving Jewish Emigration. Because they’re dead.
And nowhere is it written that the Interests of the USA and Israel are totally congruent. Although plenty in the media and commentariat will tell you so until your ears and eyes bleed.
And the Whites in South Africa and Rhodesia had as much moral right to have and hold that land as the Jews do in Israel.
For Jews who spent two thousand years mourning and complaining about what they lost and have now regained to preach to me about what me and mine have lost… and to claim some kind of moral superiority is… Well… you know it: Chutzpah.
Z schools Geoffrey, because, whatever. And who else sold arms to whom during the Cold War?
Z longs for Durban and aparthied. And blows more smoke. Did Israel cause the downfall of his beloved country? Must have.
IIRC Rhodesia wasn’t even the same country as The Union of South Africa. But we need to know about his troubled past? Or not.
South Africa and Israel cooperated on their twin secret nuclear programs and sold each other arms. You didn’t know? Of course you didn’t know.
Zaphod:
Me! Me! I knew!
Z:
Israel and the USA have one very big thing in common; they aren’t your country.
Cheers, sonny.
@Huxley:
You Old Weatherman, You! 😀
Philip Sells, I had some very good meals at The Berghof when I had to travel there.
Ah yes, Mrs. Bucket. Wonderful show. Onslow would be reading books in bed, very technical high level books.
Zaphod:
You have already made all of that crystal clear, so I’m not sure why you feel you need to reiterate it “for the millionth time.” In fact, my impression has been that, not only would you have no problem with it if Israel – or any other state – were a true and actual apartheid state, but you would welcome that and advocate it, if I understand you correctly.
So you would welcome racial and/or cultural segregation for every group from any other group that causes it trouble. Again, you’ve made that quite clear, I think. It’s one of the leitmotifs of your comments.
People often disagree with you, however, both on whether it would be a good idea and in particular instances on whether it is actually occurring in whatever country or place you might be using as an example.
Actual, you know, Americans happen to have their reasons for supporting Israel, and some of them involve American interests and not being “dragged around.” The Founders were very keen on Israel, by the way, long before the US was especially involved abroad. Americans are fully capable of making their own decisions about where their interests, both strategic and moral, might lie. And those decisions usually don’t align with your perspective. But that doesn’t mean that most people on this blog who read your comments are unaware of your position.
Actually, I haven’t seen people here espousing the idea that Israel is “some kind New (err, Old) Jerusalem City on a Hill Light Unto the Nations.” So that’s another strawman of yours.
However, although I am in complete agreement with you that Israel acts in its own self-interest as do other nations, it actually – considering its precarious and externally-threatened existence from the start – acts more ethically than most other nations would in its position. That earns no points from you, of course (nor does it make it a Light Unto the Nations), but it is a fact.
You last paragraph in your most recent comment goes like this:
Another strawman. Who preached to you about what you lost? For the record, I think the situation in South Africa has been tragic for a long long time, for white people and black people both. What I wrote about you and South Africa has to do with your advocacy of apartheid, nothing more and nothing less.
Also, for the record, South Africa’s history his little to do with that of Israel or the US, as I’m sure you’re well aware – except perhaps that at one point in each country’s history it was a British colony or dominion or part of one. As of course you know, the white population of South Africa was always (and remains) much smaller than the black population. Israel only became a nation because the Brits left and the UN partitioned it, leaving a small portion of Palestine for the Jews and giving a great deal to the Arabs (Palestinians). The Arabs didn’t accept that and fought a war, but the best modern analogy to the actual partition and creation of Israel was the creation of Pakistan (although the latter involved far more bloodshed), which was the result of partition creating a Moslem state. As in Pakistan/India, there was a huge population shift (n the case of Pakistan involving Muslims who lived in other parts of India migrating to Pakistan) and in the case of Israel large numbers of Jews who had inhabited other countries in the Middle East for thousands of years left those countries (in the case of the Jews, mostly due to persecution there) and settled in Israel, which was created partly for that purpose.
Israel wasn’t heavily settled by anyone prior to the coming of the Jews in modern times. For example:
The history of many peoples involves displacement of one group by another. In fact, the black population of South Africa displaced (for the most part) the earlier more sparse aboriginal population (same was true in America between European colonialists and the group that used to be called “Indians”). That’s the way history goes. Many tragic events are involved. But it doesn’t mean that the history of each country is all that similar. The differences are profound.
Zaphod:
Another almost ludicrous point you tried to make was when you wrote: “For Jews who spent two thousand years mourning and complaining about what they lost and have now regained…” Why do I say “ludicrous”? Because of what you left out. It wasn’t just mourning for a place they once had inhabited, although there was some of that. It was yearning for a place where they would not be massacred over and over and over, and where they would not be persecuted and driven out of country after country.
The Brits and the Afrikaners in South Africa did not have a history anything like that.
A couple points:
1. Lori Lightfoot is as crazy leftist as the Squad, but she’s also much more practical and in an office which demands a minimal level of competence and tangible results (unlike junior members of the House in ridiculously safe seats). She is clearly fed up with the union’s antics and I wish her well (in this matter, at least).
2. The smug ‘pass the popcorn’ comments we inevitably see whenever there’s an internecine battle between progs get very tiresome. Perhaps this could be simply amusing for conservatives, if it occurred in a vacuum. It doesn’t. These battles start in big, lefty cities, but they will be coming soon (if they haven’t already arrived) to a school district near you.
3. How did this thread descend into yet another throw-down over Israel? I realize Zaphod is a provocateur (albeit an intriguing one), but still, that debate gets very wearisome. I actually agree with some of Zaphod’s points (though not his bombast), but after a while this is beating a very, very dead horse.
“Intriguing?” Takes all kinds. Cancer can be intriguing to an oncologist I suppose, but no one wants to really know it in person. It tends to end badly. But you be you.
Ask Z why he detoured the thread to Israel. It’s his bug/feature.
Geoffrey Britain on January 5, 2022 at 5:45 pm said:
j e,
Not to quibble but it is not the teacher’s unions that are worthless but their membership. Union leadership is elected.
Currently, the great majority of teachers in America at heart are effectively communist activists. An even higher percentage of academia are so. That ideology was not forced upon them, they embraced it. They pursued that career not to teach but to indoctrinate.
Word up.
Right you are. The process starts in high school, students are encouraged into education, the right sympathetic students. Colleges of Education have the lowest GPAs and test scores on admission. At the end, upon graduation, they have highest GPAs and lowest GRE scores. Graduate school is worse.
My junior high years were 1969-1972. I remember one teacher saying “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” Or the other way around, a very Marxist thing to say. We celebrated the first Earth Day, you can be sure. I also remember social studies class where we were told ancient Greeks practicing homosexual activity was normal. Actually, that was only for master servant relationship, one of dominant party exploiting a slave. That was part of the … making gay okay…. effort back then. So actually the teachers, through their unions may be doing the students a favor.
There was a movie… Waiting for Superman… which was about the need for a superman to come and save the student and the school. The student realized Superman wasn’t coming. They would need to save themselves.
That’s very different from the statistics I saw
I’m not reporting the breakdown of the general population or of the public school census, but of the total population of school age. You can see from the data there’s a strong propensity among white anglo parents to eschew the district schools and make other arrangements.
By writing what I wrote about Zaphod and South Africa, I was not referring to anything connected with the schooling or literacy of South African black people and government policy about the education of black people in that country. I was referring to Zaphod’s general racial attitudes, especially about black people but about race in general, its meaning and significance, and what to do about racial conflict and racial differences.
I’m aware of that. I’m pointing out that the revealed preferences of the Boer governments in South Africa were not those you’d expect of a population in sum snidely indifferent to the welfare of others (even though you could critique Boer racial attitudes from a half-dozen different directions and every society has its bad apples). Outside of Ethiopia and the Sahel, Tropical African societies were in 1885 pre-literate. I doubt literacy was terribly common even in areas where it was present.
Some of your commenters don’t discuss their biography, some do and their biography is verifiable to some degree because they comment under a variant of their actual name (at least one of Mike K’s books is available on Amazon and a PubMed search would lead you to his professional literature; there’s indubitably an academic library with a stash of the magazine ‘Mac’ used to publish, which your local libraries can locate for you via OCLC). Some offer biographical tidbits which are plausible; some do not.
My work in destriying wesfern indoc is proceeding quite well. Soon people will get ymar style education.
“And I also have a problem with the ‘Conservative’ tendency to see it as some kind New (err, Old) Jerusalem City on a Hill Light Unto the Nations type nonsense.”
A topic i have expertise on.
While the veil has thickened here, lessening ky all sèeing eye and watcher s gaze, i do note the reply by neo that found fathers liked israel. That was of courae not the state of israel post 1950s. Did we have founding fathers time travel to the 1950s?
When they use the term is ra el it refers to the scattered 12 tribes. Of which jews…. the real ones, onky come feom the line of judah and .5 benjamine.
So for israel it also often referred to christians or those of the lost lineages. They saw america as a regathering of is ra el.
This trinity would be isis ra el. 3 gods. 1 male. 1 female. 1 the son.
Many founding americans worshipped the spirit of columbia. An isis icon. Blavatsky wrote a book even.
The history of many peoples involves displacement of one group by another. In fact, the black population of South Africa displaced (for the most part) the earlier more sparse aboriginal population
I think anthropologists have concluded that the eastern half of what is today South Africa was occupied by Bantu in 1650 and the western half by the ancient Khoi-san population. The Khoi-san tribes you find in Namibia and Botswana today. They’re among the ancestors of South Africa’s Coloured population, but otherwise rare in South Africa.
Highly entertaining interchanges between Neo and the Unemployed Rickshaw Man.
Much more edifying than listening to The Grifter talking about how things are looking up for 2020.
huxley,
I used the same Hemingway example on the New York thread. Great minds think alike?
Great cities can collapse and lesser cities can rise. I grew up in Chicago and did not anticipate the renaissance it went through in the ’90s and oughts after I left, in the ’80s. Similar to New York City from the ’70s to oughts.
Detroit is a shell of its former self. Once America’s fourth largest city it lost 25% of its population between 1999 and 2010. St. Louis hit its peak population in 1965. In the ’80s it still had more Fortune 100 companies than Chicago. About 20% of St. Louis residential homes are vacant and it’s no better for commercial properties. Gary, Indiana, Flint, Michigan and Cleveland, Ohio saw similar losses. Hard to believe these cities will recover.
It could happen in New York City and Chicago. It is possible.
Detroit is a shell of its former self. Once America’s fourth largest city it lost 25% of its population between 1999 and 2010. St. Louis hit its peak population in 1965. In the ’80s it still had more Fortune 100 companies than Chicago. About 20% of St. Louis residential homes are vacant and it’s no better for commercial properties. Gary, Indiana, Flint, Michigan and Cleveland, Ohio saw similar losses. Hard to believe these cities will recover.
2/3 of the population of greater Chicago, and 80% of the population of greater St. Louis and >80% of the population of greater Detroit reside in suburban developments which are (with an exception here or there) in satisfactory condition. Transfer control of law enforcement to a multi-county authority which operates over the whole metropolitan settlement, and you have taken the first step you need to take to improve the quality of life in the core municipality of each place. Replace public agency with voucher-funded philanthropic agencies to provide primary and secondary schooling, and you have taken step 2.
Some may be aware of the movement to insist the Founding Fathers were a bunch of selfish, ungrateful greed heads. Didn’t want to repay the Brits for protection against the French and Indians.
That way, we can discredit the “negative constitution” and US political culture. See Obama and millions of others.
Talking to the fourteen year old granddaughter–who can fire off oceans of “Hamilton”–about the BoR. The Third Amendment seems kind of non sequiturish, sort of. But she’d been taught about the Quartering Acts, which she thought were an outrage.
That was reassuring.
After the fourth of the stupid Anglo-French wars of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Brits had a large army which they didn’t want to demobilize immediately, and didn’t want at home. So the colonies kept what they had, at the colonies’ expense until the Brits could figure out what to do with them.
Meantime, the colonists recalled being prominent in the parallel wars in North America where, eventually, the Brits got Canada and the colonists got the taxes.
As I say, it was reassuring.
Art Deco,
Might look good on paper but how do you propose getting all those politicians to give up their power over their fiefdoms?
Hint: They won’t.
Yes, one can only hope that Chicago will “come back”. Fabulous city.
(From what I’ve heard of Detroit over the past five or so years, good will, imagination, financial opportunity and lots of elbow grease and positive vibes are helping to resurrect some of the formerly run-down downtown neighborhoods.)
OTOH, things could always get worse…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10374399/Dozens-corpses-lined-morgue-Kazakhstan-forces-slaughter-protesters.html
…and a metaphor alert (for those who believe absolutely that they’re on the right path):
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10374979/Chinese-truck-dangles-edge-cliff-getting-lost-sat-nav.html
Though on a happier note:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10374431/Philippines-beachgoers-form-human-chain-rescue-drowning-tourist-choppy-seas-Video.html
And we’ll finish off with something a bit on the worrisome side:
“Some damn thing in the Balkans” redux?—
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10375005/Serbian-president-slams-Scott-Morrison-Novak-Djokovic-Covid-vaccine-exemption-saga.html
Might look good on paper but how do you propose getting all those politicians to give up their power over their fiefdoms?
How is it that in institutional life, matters improve as well as decay?
(While we’re at it, Michigan has an initiative process).
Ymarsakar:
The Founders and the historic Israel, and the Jewish people.
Hi, Art. I think your idea about Wayne County and surroundings is interesting. But I have a question about this part:
Transfer control of law enforcement to a multi-county authority which operates over the whole metropolitan settlement, and you have taken the first step you need to take to improve the quality of life in the core municipality of each place.
How would you ensure that the pathologies which might infect the core municipal area don’t start to point outward and infect the surroundings, rather than the converse?
How would you ensure that the pathologies which might infect the core municipal area don’t start to point outward and infect the surroundings, rather than the converse?
Social disorder doesn’t spread like lava down a volcano. If it did, you’d have these problems in Detroit’s suburbs now. The utility of countywide or multi-county police forces is in improved co-ordination, opportunities for salutary division of labor, and socialization of costs over the whole community rather than allocating the lion’s share to the least affluent and most crime-ridden administrative unit.
Art, thanks for the reply. However, I wasn’t thinking entirely of the social disorder issues, but rather of the bureaucratic problems, inertia, corruption and so on.
but rather of the bureaucratic problems, inertia, corruption and so on.
Your problem in core cities is (1) that the police force is understaffed and (2) that the institutional incentives are in place that discourage police from doing anything but work-to-rule. Neither problem is rendered worse by moving the provision of police services from municipal government to county government.
Zaphod,
I wish I’d revisited ths thread earlier for a more timely response. Nevertheless, re:
No, I’m not Jewish, I did have a Jewish step mother from 14 on and we got along wonderfully. She passed away in 2019. I still grieve for her.
Given the extent of the anti-semitism in the world Israel being a semi-ethno state is a requirement for survival. It’s only semi because the Jews did not drive out the arabs already living in Israel.
Had prior to aparthied ending, white south africans been under even close to the degree of terrorist attacks Israelis endured it definately would have been extensively reported in the US for two reasons. “If it bleeds, it leads” and because our liberal/leftist media would have been delighted at the slaughter of white racists.
“South Africa and Israel cooperated on their twin secret nuclear programs and sold each other arms.”
I’d forgotten those rumors. What expertise did S. Africa have in developing nuclear weapons? What external threat did the aparthied S. African government perceive that would lead them to see a need for such weapons… ?
BTW, what happened to S. Africa’s nuclear weapons? Did the current government acquire them? Why no apparent concern about them? Possibly because they never existed?
“For Jews who spent two thousand years mourning and complaining about what they lost and have now regained to preach to me about what me and mine have lost… and to claim some kind of moral superiority is… Well… you know it: Chutzpah.”
It is an article of faith that it was God who gave Israel to the Jews. What God grants, only he can nullify. To accept the loss is to dismiss the covenant. Clearly that point escapes you.
I’m unaware of Israel preaching to anyone. Factually inform me.
@GB:
No rumours. It was an open secret that Israel and South Africa conducted a small atmospheric or undersea test in the South Atlantic back in the 70s. Showed up on the early warning satellites which look for launch and explosion spectral characteristics.
What external threat? Have you never heard of stuff like this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cuito_Cuanavale
Obviously not. Much of the 1980s was spent contending with a Cuban expeditionary force hell bent on helping the Angolans take Namibia. Which is reason number 666 why White-Ruled South Africa wasn’t *totally* thrown under the bus by the West until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Every White South African male from a few years younger than me (not me personally.. we emigrated when I was much younger because saw what was inevitable) upwards living today has been conscripted and fought to keep the Cubans out and also to guard the border with Zimbabwe where a NORTH KOREAN infantry division was imported by Mugabe to genocide the Matabele, his tribe’s ancestral enemies (he was a Shona). You don’t know that either. Despite it bleeding, it didn’t lead. So you can dump that rule of thumb, if you don’t mind.
@GB:
It’s an article of faith that God gave Israel to the Jews? Cool. It’s an article of faith to the Voortrekker Boers that God gave them the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. Where did they go wrong? Did they break the Covenant by throwing a few prawns on the barbie? Oops.. got my countries mixed up there for a moment.
For the fifty billionth time. I’ve got zero problem with how the state of Israel came into being and how the Israelis defend it. It’s this fairytale childish Shabbos Goy belief that they’re somehow unique and special and that others must be bad if they pull the same stunts that raises my ire. Capisce?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93South_Africa_relations
http://www.sadf.sentinelprojects.com/tbd/sanuc.html
Go learn some stuff.
@GB:
Re Preaching:
I was commenting on Neo’s pulling the ‘Zaphod is a White South African Racist’ stunt whenever I say something factual about Blacks and issues caused by incompatible races living alongside each other.
My point being that there are plenty of parallels between Israeli-Palestinian relations and White and Black South African relations and shared histories of living together. Or not living together.
Mind you, if I were Neo, I’d say exactly what she did.
^— And this is the crux of it. We all bat for our teams. She for hers. I for mine.
What I really dislike is not Jews or Jewish Ethnocentrism or Blacks and Black Ethnocentrism… it’s Suicidal White tendency to let other races lecture them about Universal Ideals. No such thing exists when your tribe bumps into another tribe. The Particular will always eventually genocide one way or another the Universal.
Getting back to the thread’s actual topic for a moment, I saw some indication today that the Chicago teachers’ strike is actually illegal. Due among other things to the fact that only 73% voted in favor when a 75% minimum is required by state law, apparently. I’m not aware of what specifically the other legal factors are, but that’s an interesting starting point. The obvious question is, does it really matter in the long run? I’m sure there have been other cases of past strikes (of not just teachers, of course) that were not in accord with law current at the time. Could it matter this time?
Z in a display of irony accuses Neo of pulling a “stunt” and the declares his opinion as ‘truth’ which if not followed leads to ‘suicide’ of nations and cultures.
Fantastic.
And his much denied fixation on the Jews and Israel somehow pops up again. Astounding.
Zaphod,
I have little interest into delving into S. Africa’s history and so I’ll take your POV under advisement, which is not to imply that I either accept or deny it as fact.
I do find the asertion that the white S African gov. was interested in nuclear capability problematic. S Africa was a wealthy country and had the conventional forces to easily defend itself.
“It’s an article of faith to the Voortrekker Boers that God gave them the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.”
Really. Where pray tell does that biblical article of faith lie? The right of conquest is ancient but not religious. In fact, presumably the Boers claimed to be Christian. What chance that the Christ would agree that they had a right to that land? Might of arms underlay their claim, nothing else.
Don’t confuse me with others, I’ve never even implied that you object to Israel’s right to defend its right to exist. We do disagree as to its particulars, to its political importance and to its biblical importance.
BTW, there are no “incompatible races”. There are incompatible cultures and ideologies.
“My point being that there are plenty of parallels between Israeli-Palestinian relations and White and Black South African relations and shared histories of living together.”
Those parallels are illusory. The Israeli / Islamist conflict is theologically based in that Islam views the existance of any other theology as intolerable. The White and Black South African conflict is cultural. White apartied prevented sharing the positive aspects of the Boer and English cultures. In principle apartied is anti-Christian.
“What I really dislike is… (the) Suicidal White tendency to let other races lecture them about Universal Ideals. No such thing exists when your tribe bumps into another tribe.”
I strongly agree that whites on the left have suicidal tendencies. I strongly disagree both that Universal Ideals don’t exist and that they neccessarily reveal their non-existance when tribe meets tribe. Many indian tribes were initially friendly and only turned hostile to the white tribe when they realized that dominant elements within the white tribe were uninterested in compromise and werecin fact hostile.
“The Particular will always eventually genocide one way or another the Universal.”
The early history of every major religion refutes that assertion. Truth must underlie the Universal and since truth and reality are inseparable, it has the final say in the struggle between the selfishness of the Particular and the communion of the Universal.
History demonstrates the gradual incorporation of the Universal into mankind’s cultural perceptions. That our flawed nature results in humanity taking temporary* steps back to our upward progress, is simply the result of our inability to always live up to our highest aspirations.
* Humanity is in the juvenile stage of its maturation and juveniles often act badly. Yet ultimately, the tyranny of the few is unsustainable. Most people want to live happy, fulfilling lives but lack the discernment to consistently make wise choices.
Zaphod
By the way, I have never said a single thing on this blog about whether I am Jewish or not. People constantly assume I am, just as they assume I live in this part of New England or that part, or any number of other things about me. Sometimes they are correct about something and sometimes incorrect. But I long ago made a decision not to put a whole lot of personal information on the blog about myself, although of course there is some here.
It’s a bit amusing, I think, to learn why I put up a photo of myself. The main reason was that when I first began blogging everyone seemed to assume I was a man. I let that slide for a while without mentioning that I’m a woman, but being taken for a man from my writing started to bug me and a relative suggested I put a photo up, and gave me the idea of the Magritte reference in the photo. So I did, although the present blog photo is the third in the series as time has passed.
Also, you write “We all bat for our teams. She for hers. I for mine.” Aside from what I’ve already said about my personal background, I will add that not all batting averages are equal. The points you make and the points I make are not equal. I’ll leave readers to decide who has the higher batting average.
Chitown kids may be safer at home than in school, because roving feral predators.