AOC reminds us why those Five-Year-Plans all failed
Not that we needed a reminder. But she certainly provides it.
Here’s the text of an open letter from the New York state budget director Robert Mujica concerning the recent decision by Amazon not to follow through on a planned move to NY. He has a lot to say to many people who opposed the deal, politicians and unions and activists, and doesn’t single out AOC in any way.
But what Mujica writes certainly applies to AOC, as well as to all the other leftists who were part of the effort to drive Amazon away, and most definitely to anyone (such as AOC) who seemed to think that New York would be gaining three billion dollars from jettisoning the deal:
…[I]n retrospect, the State and the City could have done more to communicate the facts of the project and more aggressively correct the distortions. We assumed the benefits to be evident: 25,000-40,000 jobs located in a part of Queens that has not seen any significant commercial development in decades and a giant step forward in the tech sector, further diversifying our economy away from Wall Street and Real Estate. The polls showing seventy percent of New Yorkers supported Amazon provided false comfort that the political process would act responsibly and on behalf of all of their constituents, not just the vocal minority. We underestimated the effect of the opposition’s distortions and overestimated the intelligence and integrity of local elected officials.
“Incredibly, I have heard city and state elected officials who were opponents of the project claim that Amazon was getting $3 billion in government subsidies that could have been better spent on housing or transportation. This is either a blatant untruth or fundamental ignorance of basic math by a group of elected officials. The city and state ‘gave’ Amazon nothing. Amazon was to build their headquarters with union jobs and pay the city and state $27 billion in revenues. The city, through existing as-of-right tax credits, and the state through Excelsior Tax credits – a program approved by the same legislators railing against it – would provide up to $3 billion in tax relief, IF Amazon created the 25,000-40,000 jobs and thus generated $27 billion in revenue. You don’t need to be the State’s Budget Director to know that a nine to one return on your investment is a winner.
This guy is a budget director. He has to pay close attention to money and math and the bottom line, whatever his politics. One would think that legislators such as AOC would have to pay attention, too (and of course there’s her vaunted economics degree). But apparently not.
Whether AOC is merely ignorant, or less ignorant and manipulatively lying because she believes she knows that her constituents are ignorant (in other words, is she a knave or a fool or both?), I can’t say, although in this case I’d vote for “could be both.” That sort of politics can seduce many voters, particularly young, ignorant, and/or foolish ones.
Sarah Hoyt has written about a similar subject, which is essentially that a little learning (or even sometimes a lot) can be a dangerous thing, because it makes people arrogant while they can easily remain ignorant. Karl Marx is one of the prime examples, and look at all the damage he did.
Hoyt also discusses how justice can never be engineered in the sense of cosmic justice, which is one of the main themes of many of Thomas Sowell’s brilliant works such as The Quest for Cosmic Justic. Please try to get every liberal you know to read Sowell’s book. So far I’ve suggested it to many, but haven’t managed to convince a single one to read it. Maybe you’ll have more success than I’ve had.
Mollie Hemingway writes about a similar phenomenon going on with reporters, the un-winning combination of ignorance and arrogance and propaganda:
The elephant in the room for media malfeasance discussions is that many reporters are simply not smart. They fall for hoaxes easily. Over and over and over again They are obviously not well read. That this is combined with a completely unwarranted arrogance compounds the problem.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) February 17, 2019
Mollie Hemingway seems to be answering “fool” here to the “knave or fool” question. But although that’s probably true of some reporters and pundits, for the majority it’s either “fool and knave” or just plain “knave.” It’s my impression, on reading many articles by journalists, that although some are dumb, a great many are clever, knowing propagandists who will willingly sacrifice truth for The Greater Truth of progressivism.
[NOTE: Another relevant book of Sowell’s is Intellectuals and Society. I’m not suggesting that either AOC or most reporters are intellectuals, although some fancy themselves as such. But they are supported and echoed by intellectuals who seem likewise to be divorced from reality, and whose expertise in the field in which they are trained seems to encourage them to consider themselves experts in everything.
Of course, I’m someone who is willing to opine on just about everything. And I guess some might call me an intellectual of sorts—that is, I’ve got a bunch of degrees, although the only thing I’d say I’m an expert in is ballet lore. But I try to learn about what I don’t know, and I also have a certain amount of humility about my positions. Anyone whose blog is based on having once been wrong and changed his or her mind about something can’t afford to get too arrogant.]
Those Five Year Plans all failed because they were founded on the mistaken notion of human nature’s great capacity for plasticity and mutability, on the idea that by changing the” economic and social superstructure” Communists could–a la Lysenko–permanently change human nature.
That these fanatical Leftists could create a Communist “new man”–who would dedicate his whole life to the State, and who would sacrifice any personal achievement, privacy, or happiness to “the greater good”–and that ain’t how normal, ordinary people–not being ideologues and/or fanatics–think, work, or behave.
But, to attest to the success of the Five Year Plans, the Soviets and the Communist Chinese put out a whole slew of official looking, but bogus economic statistics.
“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they understand about what they imagine they can design.”
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit
—
Somewhere between Hayek’s thought and Rep. O-Cortez’s purported education in economics something somewhat seems to have gone missing.
Humility, let’s call it, if not self-awareness altogether.
I vote for both knave and fool.
Of course, she is exhibit A of the current products of the worthless education system. Schooled (indoctrinated) but not educated.
Gotta hand it to her.
She’s the real thing.
Utterly reliable.
Gorgeous, charismatic, determined.
She exudes messianic fervor.
Yep, a genuine phoney.
Queen of Nonsense.
Joan of Malarkey.
Watch the streaming, ecstatic converts follow her…over the cliff.
That bottom half of para #1 from the Mujica quote is hard hitting.
I think I saw an AOC tweet where she stated, “Oh I know there wasn’t a $3B pile of cash spent on Amazon!” And elsewhere she said, “Quit nitpicking on me.” (Paraphrasing both.)
Someone like Mollie Hemingway said that she felt that AOC just couldn’t resist stretching the truth into a more concise and impactful sound bite about the $3B. It’s kinda sorta true isn’t it? After all, AOC is on a mission from God, I mean from Mother Earth Gaia.
____
Snow on Pine,
I think you’ve got the Orwell, 1984, and Soviet concepts correct. But there also the other large Marxist school of thought, the Anarchists, which also parallels the early ignorant communists a bit.
It’s the Rousseau natural man idea, and maybe the Luddites too. The working class is oppressed by the unnatural, toxic, and destructive strictures of Western society and economy. If only we can break down those strictures then we can free people to be their natural selves. If people every get worried about how this new freedom will play out, just chant to yourselves that warlords never exist in a utopia.
Alas Ms. Hemingway, usually so incredibly astute, is here being far, far too kind.
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/amazons-virginia-hq2-faces-some-new-york-style-pushback.amp
Apparently a similar effort to oust Amazon’s planned HQ in northern Virginia is now underway. Yeesh.
“Please try to get every liberal you know to read Sowell’s book. So far I’ve suggested it to many, but haven’t managed to convince a single one to read it. Maybe you’ll have more success than I’ve had.” neo
As the Brits say, not bloody likely. IMO, you haven’t managed to convince a single one to read it because they’re afraid that it will put them between the proverbial “rock and a hard place”.
That place being then knowing that the rationale for their beliefs has been irreparably deconstructed by Sowell and yet compelled to remain advocates for their now bankrupted beliefs.
Better to cling to a lie while still able to claim the lie to be true than face the certainty that all they’ve believed is built upon lies.
Moral cowardice, plain and simple.
And, the price for that moral cowardice is the withering of the soul.
Not that they can face that even more appalling truth either, so they slip further into their depravity. TDS is simply the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Every single Senate democrat that has declared for President is now officially in favor of infanticide. All but three democrat Senators just voted against outlawing infanticide. https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/all_dems_running_for_president_helped_kill_sasse_bill_protecting_infants_born_alive_after_unsuccessful_abortion.html
As Joe Biden memorably once stated, “This is a Big Fucking Deal”
AOC is a typical product of a contemporary university education. Barack Obama, the One, believes essentially what AOC believes. She is so stridently uninformed she’s practically a cartoon. Funny thing, New York, the city that prides itself on how smart its denizens are, will no doubt reelect her, but next time with 85% of the vote instead of the measly 18,000 votes she got this time out.
It seems undeniable based on recent, public evidence that AOC is both knave and fool. Her ignorance is truly astounding, but it has become irrefutable that she will lie to cover for it, and also, truly believes she is superior to many, many people. Just look at her recent comments about Diane Feinstein as one of many examples.
It is also obvious reading her tweets on the subject that she did not understand how the deal was structured and believed there was a pool of money to be spent, whether Amazon came, or not.
In about a 2 week period she had 3, major debacles that she completely brought on herself; the Green New Deal (and its botched roll out), costing New York billions in tax revenue and tens of thousands of jobs and potential ethics violations regarding her boyfriend and her legal address.
She was defiant in her defense on all 3; not even hesitating to attack those who were attacking her with salient points it was obvious she had not even considered, let alone understands. And she keeps doubling, tripling, quadrupling down. Pelosi made it clear she is not amused. Feinstein too. Cuomo, DiBlasio. Those people know politics and they’re not playing tiddlywinks.
AOC is too dense to even recognize that she has greatly embarrassed and enraged critical allies she needs in her own party to be effective. She also does not realize they are wiser and more experienced than she. Amazingly, in response to their criticisms she continues to insist she is superior, and they will have to submit to her. She has underestimated the competition in her own party.
I’ve seen such ignorance and undeserved arrogance in athletes and entertainers, but never in a politician. Certainly not at the level of ego she has.
Mollie Hemingway is a national treasure!
One of the Little Fireflies was an excellent student. On a college visit to one of several schools offering him a full ride, academic scholarship we were in an auditorium with about 1,000 other High School students for a campus tour. After a slick video presentation and sales pitch by a Dean they released the students in groups to depart for tours tailored towards their prospective majors.
When the Education majors’ group was announced I nudged him in the ribs and whispered, “lowest average ACT scores in the auditorium.” A few majors later they announced the Journalism majors’ group. I nudged him again and said, “Oops, forget what I said about the Education majors.”
AOC seems to me to be a bit adrift from reality, the nutty positive thinking, visualize success and it will come to you if you just believe it can happen and ascend to a higher plane of existence. It seems to me like all that new age bull crap mixed in with socialism which means everyone deserves the best that is available without the details of lots of hard work on the part of engineering, logistics, capital and management, as if a superhighway system was always there just because it would be nice to have highways.
Were she smart she wold not be painting her party into a corner and then claiming she’s the boss and knows what has to be done, right now. If it turns out she is the liability I think she is and if anyone can prove she did not live in her district, she might be the next person thrown under the bus for fraud. Otherwise she will give Trump incredible talking points next year and he will bless her every time she opens her mouth.
firefly, your snide comment about teachers is unwarranted. Did you learn everything on your own?
Yes, present day teachers could be better and not so far left. It does necessarily not make them stupid.
Tommy Jay–
Then, of course, you’ve got the Communist’s concept of “false consciousness,” in which they say that someone does not know “what is really in his best interests,” and so the Communists have to intervene, to force him to do what they–with their superior, higher wisdom–know is actually in his best interests.
This idea was discussed in Israeli Historian T.L. Talmon’s interesting and, in my opinion, too little consulted, 1952 book titled, “The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy,” in which he discussed “Liberal” vs.”Totalitarian” democracy, the rise of what Talmon terms “Messianic Liberalism” during the French Revolution, the Terror, and the ideology behind it.
Things like leftist ideologue’s idea that, when people will not move in the correct direction, when they have “false consciousness,” it is the duty of such leftists to “force people to be free”–as these Leftist fanatics define “free.”
How, if, in the course of the more fanatic of these Leftist ideologue’s work, some people stubbornly stand in the way, it is regrettable, but in the name of their lofty goal, in the service of “the higher good,” those obstacles, those people have to be “eliminated,” have to be killed, so that the all important, “the great work,” the march toward Utopia can continue.
Sound familiar? Have we seen this kind of thinking at work before?
Nothing is more beneficial than AOC becoming the president if leftists taking over is inevitable, if we are going to die anyway, I would much rather die in AOC’s hands along with all those liberal billionaires she will kill first before me than in kamala harris’ hands who will make those same billionaires richer and more powerful while killing me.
Give medicare to all, and make Wall Street, Hollywood and Silicon Valley pay for it.
When seemingly intelligent people make dumb and obviously untrue statements, it is reasonable to assume that emotional bias got the better of them. Invariably, their untruths further complicate and add frustration to their lives.
What R. Firefly says about education majors is correct. I teach at a major urban university with a renowned school of education. Students there have the lowest ACT SAT scores on campus. It’s not exactly a secret.
I’ve taught of number of them. They are blockheads, which is one reason it is so easy for them to fall for Marxist twaddle.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, oddly enough, has been on the case. See “How Ed Schools Became a Menace” (4/9/18), among others.
All I can say is, all of us middle-aged-and-older people had better eat right and get regular exercise, because the fate of the Republic over the next twenty or thirty years may depend on our votes. The Left seems to be solely focus-grouping their candidates – who looks right? Who has cool hobbies? Whose social media accounts are trending?
You do opine on lots of things, Neo, but I notice that you research the facts to support your opinions. AOC considers that step unnecessary.
Interesting link on Amazon in Crystal City, sdferr. I know the area, and I do wonder how it could absorb so many new high-paying jobs. It’s already nearly impossible for lower-income people to live there, and the congestion is awful.
The problem with AOC is that her proposals and the uninformed, nutty things she says, her lack of any substantial experience, and her mannerisms make people discount her, and I don’t think that this is a person you want to discount, to not take seriously.
Because, I’m pretty sure she is dead serious in what she wants to accomplish–in her goals–and that she will walk over anyone’s face to get to that goal, nutty, ruinously expensive, and as impracticable, as far from actual attainment as it may be.
Kate–I am not intimately familiar with every inch of Crystal City, but Crystal City, it seems to me, is just a work destination, not really a residential one, that I have observed.
There don’t seem to be that many pedestrian walkways, and what ones there are, are dangerous because of all the congestion and traffic whizzing by.
I’d imagine it would be pretty easy for an unobservant pedestrian–say, looking at his cell phone, and not paying attention to the traffic in the area, the cars zipping by, the frequent U-turns, etc.–to get hit in Crystal City.
Thanks Snow on Pine,
I found an intro to Talmon’s work online. He mentions Rousseau’s notion of “general will” which could be seen either as a collectivist power or a populist democratic power, which I had missed. Though I think Rousseau would also see it as a consensus arising out of man’s natural sensibilities.
I was thinking of all that, leading towards mid 19th century anarchism as put forth by Proudhon who probably thought of himself as a libertarian taken to the nth degree. Wikipedia lists Proudhon as a “libertarian socialist” according to somebody.
Part of the contradiction, aside from communism vs. anarchism, is the difference between the sales pitch and necessities of actually running a government. Many of the early communists were all for individual liberty until they had to run a government.
“Yes, present day teachers could be better and not so far left.” LYNN HARGROVE
The kindest response I can think of to that statement Lynn is that apparently you are in denial as to what is actually being taught in the schools and willfully blind to how abysmal are the products of that ‘educational’ system.
At least 90% of “present day teachers” are not passing on to their students objectively factual knowledge but instead are engaged in Marxist/progressive indoctrination. The social ‘science’ courses are entirely Marxist, ‘revisionist’ history is now the norm and “Social Justice” ‘perspectives’ are progressing into the hard science courses, including math.
Transgender activists in drag are now visiting elementary schools and Islamic ‘familiarization’ being taught with students encouraged to write down and say The Shahada; the Islamic creed’s formal declaration of belief in the oneness of God and the acceptance of Muhammad as God’s prophet. Which Islam declares to make them Muslim…
It’s a toss up as to whether the teaching ‘profession’ or the mass media has the largest percentage of Marxist/progressives.
The brutal truth is that it couldn’t be much worse nor could it be farther left.
Lynn Hargrove, I apologize for offending you. I retold that story as a joke aimed at Journalists. As others have pointed out, it is true-ish. But as you and I know, an average says nothing about the asymptotes of a particular bell curve. There are, unquestionably, brilliant people who go into both professions, especially teaching. I have very intelligent family and close friends who teach, and I have benefitted immensely from a few people who chose the career and ended up teaching me.
Snow on Pine,
I agree with your opinion of AOC. She is deadly serious. And I don’t mean that hyperbolically. Sometimes I think she could be a major political figure, rising quickly through the ranks, but she has stepped on a lot of toes in her own party, home district and home town. I would not want Nancy Pelosi or Governor Cuomo as enemies. She’s also greatly lightened the pockets of union bosses in Long Island City. Those guys play for keeps.
My guess is there are already machinations in play to ensure she is unable to interfere further. It would not surprise me to learn the scandals about her address and boyfriend’s pay are inside jobs, leaked by Dems. Astoundingly, she seems too dense to even suspect that.
My next point will be aided from the classic, screenplay, “Back to School” starring the thespian’s thespian, Rodney Dangerfield.
Regarding Amazon, I think AOC was a pawn in a scheme that backfired. The local pols are like the dog who caught the car. As Dangerfield explains in the above quote, choosing the construction site was just the beginning of a long process that typically plays out in New York (and our current President, coincidentally, is well versed in). Local pols and union leaders were staging the protests to lay some groundwork. Make Amazon a little politically uncomfortable so they would buy some “protection” from the local pols and union bosses to limit negative publicity. Like the dog chasing and barking after the car, they never dreamed Bezos would call their bluff.
And they knew AOC was naive and dumb enough to add legitimacy to their scheme. It is astounding that, even after being called out by Amazon, AOC never spent a second on introspection to learn she’d been played by both sides.
Arrogance and ignorance are an unfortunate combination.
AOC is a gift that keeps on giving. She is not only arrogant, but also ignorant. She is a cancer to the left establishment. Keep growing and spreading. You go girl!
titan28–There is a reason Bill Ayers gave up terrorism, got a few quickie education degrees, and switched to writing his popular textbooks, model curricula, and reading lists that are used in many school of education around the country.
That’s because teaching “educators” to become Leftist “change agents,” militant foot soldiers in the Gramscian Long March though our institutions and culture, intent on “fundamentally transforming” what they have been taught is a corrupt, racist, rapacious, evil America by propagandizing their students, is a far more effective and quicker way to bring about revolution.
Look around you, watch, and listen.
Having done that, can anyone deny that such a “fundamental transformation” isn’t already far advanced?
That the ill and mis-educated Leftist foot soldiers many of our educators have created have disdain for and despise a country and heritage they know far too little about, or that what they do think they “know” about the United States is wrong?
Geoffrey Britain on February 26, 2019 at 4:52 pm at 4:52 pm said:
…
Not that they can face that even more appalling truth either, so they slip further into their depravity. TDS is simply the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Every single Senate democrat that has declared for President is now officially in favor of infanticide. All but three democrat Senators just voted against outlawing infanticide.
* * *
But, with the bulk of Democrat voters ever notice?
I realized some 30 years ago that my Democrat friends were still thinking they were backing the party of FDR and Kennedy (and we all know now how much we didn’t know about them), and almost totally unaware of where the national party was going.
Now it is exponentially worse.
“will the bulk” not “with” — why does Edit always go on break when you need it?
Is this a Typo Union shop?
Students there have the lowest ACT SAT scores on campus. It’s not exactly a secret.
In NZ, Education majors have low scores. That’s because they are overwhelmingly the primary school teachers. It really doesn’t require a genius to teach a 5 year old.
Secondary school teachers get ordinary degrees, then do a teaching diploma. So they are not represented in the education majors.
At least 90% of “present day teachers” are not passing on to their students objectively factual knowledge but instead are engaged in Marxist/progressive indoctrination.
https://soonerpoll.com/analysis-teachers-in-oklahoma-are-more-likely-to-be-registered-republican-than-voters-at-large/
I’m sure you’ll “No True Scotsman” anything I direct your way, but all the actual statistics I have seen (unlike ones you’ve pulled out your fundament) show that teachers lean Democrat, but not anything like the public imagination. Even in Democrat states there are Republican teachers.
And a large number of the Democrat ones are moderates.
There are some far left leaning teachers — it does tend to attract them — but pretending they all are is not correct, nor helpful. It means that the conservative ones, like me, end up on the other side from you — because your stupid exaggerations are worse than most teachers voting Democrat. It is a slur on a profession that is hard enough to staff as it is.
I have had many teachers I respected , but I think some of the growing resentment towards the education system is from the not-so-subtle arrogance of some “educators” and the system itself. The transition from “teachers” to “educators” seems to have coincided with a kind of Gnostic like attitude that only those with degrees in “Education” have the secret knowledge to educate.
The Education system itself seems to push for keeping people in school for more and more years . What once required no degree, now requires an Associate. What once required an Associate , we will make it in to a B.A. , no a masters, etc.
Titan 28
What R. Firefly says about education majors is correct. I teach at a major urban university with a renowned school of education. Students there have the lowest ACT SAT scores on campus. It’s not exactly a secret.
It’s a half truth.
Education Realist had graphs comparing the SAT scores of those who had passed certification tests with the SAT scores of college graduates. The following certification areas have average SAT Math and Verbal scores below the average SAT scores of college graduates: Elementary Ed, Special Ed, and Phys Ed.
However, SAT scores of high school teachers are far from “bottom of the barrel.” TFA Diversity and the Credibility Gap.
The average SAT Verbal scores of high school teachers are above the average SAT verbal scores of college graduates.
For SAT Math scores, the only teacher certification areas that have scores above those of the average college graduate are Math and Science Teachers. Eyeballing it , it would appear that Science teachers average about 565 Math compared to 542 Math average score for college grads. Eyeballing it , it would appear that Math teachers average about 590 Math compared to 542 Math average score for college grads.
While high school English, Social Studies teachers etc. have average SAT Math scores lower than the average college grad, they aren’t teaching Math, so their Math scores are irrelevant to what they teach. What IS relevant to what they teach is that their SAT Verbal scores are higher than those of the average college graduate.
BTW, I taught math for two years, and had very high SAT scores. I was not successful as a teacher. A teacher needs to be a persuader- a salesman of sorts- and persuading didn’t come easily for me. Knowledge of one’s subject is a necessary but not sufficient for successful teaching.
link for the graphs: https://www.ets.org/Media/Education_Topics/pdf/TQ_full_report.pdf
More discussion of the issue at Education Realist.
My rant: the Ed Schools do a horrible job of training new teachers. To the extent that there are successful teachers, it is not because of the teacher training they got at their respective Ed Schools, but in spite of it. There is a need for Ed Schools, as it is not intuitively obvious for most of us what is the best way to present a given subject to a given group of students. Instead of informing prospective teachers what has worked or not worked in 2500 years of formal classroom instruction, the Ed Schools focus on the great new unproved theory of the year. Five years later, research has shown the great new unproved theory is balderdash, and it is on to the next new unproved theory.
https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/teacher-quality-pseudofacts-part-ii/
https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/tag/licensure-tests/
What is the argument here?
5 year plans failed because a market economy is vastly more productive than one controlled from the center…therefore we should support NYC’s attempt to control its economy from the center?
The fact that the $3B in subsidies / tax-breaks is dependent on Amazon delivering first doesn’t change the fact that the central planners, not the marketplace, are picking the winners.
That there are tax credits (i.e. preferences for particular sorts of enterprise) requires that general rates of levy be higher than they otherwise would be, which crimps the economic activity of households and of non-beneficiary businesses accordingly. Remarking on that is foreign to the thinking of the Albany nomenklatura.
New York would be better off if state and local government would stick to their last: generate and enforce the regulatory architecture of society (i.e. the prudential application of moral norms, the promotion of public order, the promotion of transparency in business transactions), to generate and maintain public works, to contain the effects of externalities on the general welfare, to allocate use of common property resources, and to animate the ethic of common provision in society. This last is going to be manifest in public financing (through various conduits and to a greater or lesser degree) of medical care, long term care, schooling, child care, legal services, and transit services and also in some modest income redistribution. What’s not on this list is the allocation of investment capital above and beyond the construction and maintenance of public works. And we do not benefit from penalizing or promoting particular economic sectors except as a knock-on effect of attempting to contain externalities and allocate common property resources.
More discussion of the issue at Education Realist.
Education Realist’s shtick is that teachers bear no responsibility for failures in institutional performance, that institutional architecture is optimal, that the problem with school administrators is that they aren’t doing x, y, and z to make the work day more agreeable for teachers; and that it’s perfectly reasonable for white collar civil servants to be off the clock for three months of the year and to retire at 59 while the rest of the work force is retiring at 63. (Oh, and cops are bums because they typically retire at 55). ER doesn’t object to the content of teacher-training programs and thinks Dr. Eric Hanushek is an idiot. (As only an idiot cites his sources and produces his own research).
therefore we should support NYC’s attempt to control its economy from the center?
They’re not attempting to control anything. They’re just tossing out bon bon’s for business. Makes them feel useful and creates dependency relationships creatures like Shelly Silver fancy.
Donkey Chompers couldn’t be more foolish. It’ll take a while before she sinks to the moral level of Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
Education Realist had graphs comparing the SAT scores of those who had passed certification tests with the SAT scores of college graduates.
Did Education Realist mention that the share of each cohort obtaining a baccalaureate degree was 24% in 1974 and sits at 45% today?
Years and years ago we screwed up public education here in Texas when the governor at the time asked good old Ross Perot to help him set up a system to qualify teacher performance and as the years years progressed the good folks in Austin decided all Texas kids needed to have the same material taught in every grade at the same time. In order to decide if they were successful there were tests administered to the students at various time during their journey and of course the administration and teachers are graded on the results so the kids are taught to perform, like trained seals taking the tests.
In order to control the new wonderful plans school administration started growing in numbers so they could handle all of the paperwork of the teachers who had to show they were with the program that required a lot of teacher time. I have a number of friends who are retired educators, both administration and teachers and they are all glad to retired and out of the mess. There is a system and plan in place that rewards those who know how to work the system and at the teacher level there are a lot of good people working hard in a difficult situation to do some teaching and a lot of just treading water. The title IX stuff has also impacted teaching because there are some children with difficult learning and behavior issues who should be in special education schools that are required to mainstreamed into the school system and they required a large amount of the teacher’s attention, between those kids and some of the truly smart ones who get some extra help so the test scores are higher the kids in the middle are often just left to learn on their own.
The first time I retired I did some substitute teaching in Dallas and part of my time I spent in South Dallas, an area full of diversity, teaching Jr. High kids in the alternative school where those who had used drugs or did a bit of violence had to spend a month or two before they could return to their regular schools. That was an eye opener, we worked hard to keep control of the classrooms with about 15 to 20 in each class until the week before the State Testing when the schools dumped so many kids in the alternative school that our population doubled and it was chaos. The students sent to us were the ones who would score the lowest scores in their regular school and the administration of those schools were playing the system sending them down to us where the scores would not matter. I was told by the regular staff to suck it up because that’s the way it’s done and since I was unable to keep any control of my classes since I lacked the skill sets for that job I decided it was time to leave. That was over a decade ago and I don’t think things have improved.
It is so bad and so sad that a lot of young people have no idea what they don’t know and those who grow up in government housing being raised by their grandmothers and their peer groups really don’t have much of a compass to chart a life plan, they just go along and get along from day to day. There are generations of people living, as best they can, they are not really stupid but they lack the knowledge most of us take for granted and when they turn 18 they vote.
It was easy for Obama to appeal to these folks who need leadership and the Chicago Left Machine created him and I am of the opinion that AOC now in DC was created by the Left NYC machine to go to Washington, get a term under her belt and become a rising star but this time around it might have backfired because she seems to have taken herself seriously and getting ahead of the plan.
Years and years ago we screwed up public education here in Texas
See Jerry Jesness’ accounts of his years as a public schoolteacher in Texas, ca. 1971. (Includes a priceless story of a mother insisting to him it was unfair to fail her son when the side-by-side examples of his word-for-word plagiarism were placed in front of her; the athlete was passed by the principal). When Gov. White said that the 97% pass rate the state’s teachers received on a basic competency exam administered in 1986 was ‘An ‘A’ in anyone’s book’, a graduate of a Texas high school chortled thus in a magazine commentary on the subject, “Proves that Texas occupational testers, like Texas teachers, are easy graders’. You’re going to have to work harder to persuade some of us that the place hasn’t been a pedagogic ruin forever.
Yep, a genuine phoney:
https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2019/02/27/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-is-furious-at-
these-photos-of-her-and-a-staffer-eating-a-hamburger-and-killing-the-planet/
https://spectator.us/aoc-paying-boyfriend/
I guess we can expect more intense looks and hysterical counter-attacks.
Count on it.
File under: Do what I say, not what I do. (And don’t you forget it!!)
“What is the argument here?” – Manju
NYC and NY state have spent at least 50 years building a high tax, high regs. hell hole. Part of that plan is building a giant and low productivity gov. bureaucracy so that all those people feel trapped and vote to maintain it.
The correct free market solution? Slash taxes massively, fire half of the bureaucracy (especially high seniority), eliminate 80%+ of regs and slash the welfare-like expenses. Then they can function like Texas or Tenn. and treat everyone equally and still attract business. There’s an old saying: Capital goes where it is respected.
Since they obviously can’t do that, they must do the next best things.
Example: Oprah Winfrey has an aid that documents every hour she spends inside the borders of CA so that she does not exceed the 3 months max./year that would force her to declare herself a CA resident. She owns a mansion in Montecito.
I’ve read that NY is much worse than CA if you try to leave. It’s a soft version of the iron curtain concept.
The other tactic is to offer special breaks to businesses to move into the otherwise undesirable situation. If I got it straight, that $3B break was perhaps a 23% tax break for Amazon. It was the least bad option by a wide margin. To be fair, I don’t think those breaks would have done the trick, if it wasn’t the case that wealthy people at the top of Amazon really liked the idea of being in NYC.
Special breaks and consideration are a feature, not a bug, for powerful people like Cuomo and de Blasio. Kiss my ring and maybe you’ll get a break.
Here is a rather wild piece by Peggy Noonan on the topic. I can’t tell if it is satire or if she is really dispensing with her RINO label. I think it is the former and a pragmatic look at big city left-wing power politics.
“What is the argument here?” – Manju
NYC and NY state have spent at least 50 years building a high tax, high regs. hell hole. Part of that plan is building a giant and low productivity gov. bureaucracy so that all those people feel trapped and vote to maintain it.
It’s not a hell hole at all, and New York City in particular has made great strides in improving the quality of life in the last generation.
The correct free market solution? Slash taxes massively, fire half of the bureaucracy (especially high seniority), eliminate 80%+ of regs and slash the welfare-like expenses. Then they can function like Texas or Tenn. and treat everyone equally and still attract business. There’s an old saying: Capital goes where it is respected.
That’s not a ‘solution’. That’s combox trash talk.
The ratio of public expenditure to personal income in New York is, I believe, about 20% higher than is the norm in this country. You cannot ‘slash taxes massively’ without doing severe damage to public services. They do some things comparatively well. Public sector pension plans are actuarially sound in New York, to take one example. The higher education system isn’t over-built and foolishly hyped the way it is in other states, the campuses are intelligently deployed, and there’s a satisfactory (if imperfect) division of labor between institutions. Outside of the public sector, but influenced by it, is the medical sector. I’ve had more confidence in doctors and hospitals in New York than I’ve had other places I’ve lived, FWIW. There are reasons to stay if you can.
New York has in the post-war period lost some of the comparative advantages it had previously which accounted for its industrial efflorescence. There’s not much you can do or should do about that collectively. It’s foolish to expect the 50 states to maintain precisely the same income ratios and population ratios over time. Some are going to be growing faster, some slower. New York remains one of the country’s most affluent states and there’s something to be said for demographic somnambulance in this age.
A real problem is that we’re paying top-dollar but receiving only so-so public services, especially in the realm of primary and secondary schooling and (in the Upstate cities) in the realm of law enforcement.
For many years NY state has been spending many 10’s of $M promoting Start-Up NY.
“START-UP NY offers new and expanding businesses the opportunity to operate tax-free for 10 years on or near eligible university … campuses … ”
Then comes the fine print:
If they allowed new Restaurants and Retailers into the plan the unfairness aspect could really crush the older existing businesses.
What about Finance and financial services? Now we’re talking about big money and power. Did Mr. Politician appreciate the big campaign contribution I gave last year? Show your appreciation.
I’ve read that NY is much worse than CA if you try to leave. It’s a soft version of the iron curtain concept.
I’ve moved out of New York and lived to tell the tale.
AOC: 80% fool, 20% knave.
“(in other words, is she a knave or a fool or both?)”
Why not use “a fraud or a fool” ? I like the alliteration.
Definition of fraud: a person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities that do not exist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmEHKF99v2I
My field of expertise is in construction. I can tell you that in virtually every news article I’ve ever read about a construction related story, the reporter has gotten it completely wrong. This includes cases in which I was interviewed and was the principal source.
I have found that the vast majority of reporters have an arrogance that leads them to think they already understand the story before they even arrive. All they are looking for are a few facts or quotes that confirm their original bias.
So, if reporters do this in one complex field of human endeavor (construction), it seems very likely to me that they do it in every other field including law, medicine, industry, etc.
So, how about it? For those of you with specialized expertise, what is your experience with the reporting done on your field?
So, how about it? For those of you with specialized expertise, what is your experience with the reporting done on your field?
I thought the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on the Macondo blowout in 2010 was very well done. It pointed out to me that BP did not follow accepted industry procedures. I was flabbergasted at finding out what the idiot BP company man- IIRC so directed by some onshore honcho- did. There are good reasons for following accepted industry procedures- they have been shown to work. Disregard them at your peril- which is even more important when in a dangerous situation. That well had been long shown to be drilling in a problematic/dangerous formation- all the more reason to be careful. The WSJ highlighted how careless BP was.
Other news sources also pointed out that BP had a history of not following accepted industry procedures, such as in North Sea drilling rigs and in a Texas City refinery.
Gringo,
Is the oil business your area of expertise?
Roy Nathausen
Gringo’s use of the phrase “company man” indicates at minimum a passing knowledge of the oil patch.
At the research organization I worked at, my job description did not require me to interact with reporters–as people in some other positions had to do–quite the contrary–and my organization was usually pretty successful in keeping reporters who wanted to talk to us at bey.
However, once a reporter somehow got hold out my telephone number, and called me at my desk, to question me about a Report I had written that had national, foreign relations, and legal implications.
His MO, over again over again, was this–he’d say “you wrote this, but doesn’t that mean or imply that?”
To which I kept replying, “what I wrote in my Report was it, what my research found and what I meant to say–no more, no less–and that I was not going to speculate, answer hypotheticals, or go beyond what I wrote.”
It was a game of cat and mouse.
The reporter kept trying to bait me, to provoke me into saying something that was obviously going to get me (and my organization) into trouble, and to get him some headlines.
What a pain!
Is the oil business your area of expertise?
I worked in Anaco and Maracaibo- among other places. It’s been a while, though.
My one prior experience with “the Press” was during the time when mortgage rates were at their peak–13 or 14%–and when my wife and I visited a new townhouse development that was offering an exceptionally low rate of financing–something around 9%.
It just so happened that a reporter from a major newspaper was there, and she asked us a few questions about what drew us there, etc., etc.
Well, a day or so later there we were, quoted in an article about people’s quest for affordable housing in a time of such sky high interest rates.
The only problem was that what they quoted us as having said was not what we had said to that reporter; things had been changed around, and had us saying things we never actually said.
And that was, I had thought, essentially a non-political, a non-controversial story.
I shudder to think of what they would have had us saying, if we had been interviewed about our views on some controversial or political subject.
Gringo,
In the case of the WSJ, a publication by and for business, I expect that they have specialists on staff who are equipped to deal with the oil industry.
Thanks for pointing out an exception to my observations.
Snow on Pine,
Your experiences with the press are close to mine.
In the two cases in which I was interviewed, it wasn’t that they were trying to trap me or make me look bad. They just didn’t have the background or patience to learn the real story, so they made one up.
Roy Nathanson, you are in good company. You have independently reached the same conclusion of brilliant author and M.D., Michael Crichton. He called it the Gellar – Mann effect.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect&ved=2ahUKEwigqfiUo93gAhUUyYMKHXQtDF8QFjAAegQIBhAB&usg=AOvVaw1yOoDKY_2NhZ67mOXpgSHX
To answer your question, yes, I see it all the time in areas where I have some knowledge.
Edit: “Gell-Mann amnesia effect.”
Rufus–Reading through what the MSM puts out, it is quite obvious that a lot of these people just don’t know what they are talking about.
One case in point, MSM articles almost universally written with the assumption that “guns are a frightening, out of control, and murderous public menace,” which talk about weapons in ways that reveal to even me–someone who only has only a basic knowledge, derived almost exclusively from reading about and watching videos on the subject, and minimal instruction and time at the range–that these reporters don’t have a clue, even knowledge of such elementary things as basic terminology, and how various types of weapons function on their most basic levels.
It’s embarrassing.
Then, we move on to things like the uses and misuses of statistics.
Most times, you might just as well consult one of those old timey “magic eight balls” to get the answers, and chose between the answers–“it is certain,” “don’t count on it,” or “ask again later.”
Rufus,
Thanks for the link. Interesting. Perhaps this blind spot or “amnesia” is a form of conceit. We have an appreciation for the complexity of our own field. So we give the reporters a pass, because, “After all, how could they possibly be expected to understand what it took me so many years to master?” But we fail to assume that the other fields of endeavor might be equally complex and difficult.