Political Dump

[waldopaper]

Oh... don't look at the crash. Damn... you looked. "Politics" are useless. But you can't avoid looking at the wreck. Then you wish you hadn't. Dump it on this thread. Maybe we can get it out of our system.

[pan]

One entry is lacking insight:

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.
You become incredibly wealthy by using your influence in D.C. to win government contracts and subsidies while complaining about taxes.
You cut your production costs by hiring illegals for below subsistence wages while complaining about "dirty Mexicans".
You sell your milk at below cost in order to bankrupt your neighbors, picking up their business for pennies on the dollar.
You monopolize the milk market through antitrust violations.
You create higher prices by manipulating the market, creating false shortages.
You create a huge amount of wealth for yourself by investing in short-term, unsustainable and ultimately disastrous schemes.
Your business is massively in debt due to the unsustainable short term schemes that have made you incredibly wealthy but, because you have friends in Congress and the White House and because the economic ripple effect created by you going out of business is too horrific to contemplate, vast amounts of capital are taken out of Social Security funds to bail you out.
You complain about the government taxing you.

[littleoldme]

You pretty much nailed it. I'm really sick and tired of them using my tax dollar to bail out these assholes.

[BO]

Excellent, Pan. And now we have the term "moral hazard" being used to describe current actions by the fed to rescue these fuckers. Moral fucking hazard? The whole fucking system is evil--supported by democrats and republicans alike. And the true suffering due to the actions of these pricks has yet to begin. The system bears no resemblance to capitalism--it's feudal. And the peons will eat each other before they realize who their true enemy is/was.

My goat ate the economy.

""Moral hazard" is a term given currency by today's subprime mortgage crisis. It means that people will take a stupid risk if they believe they won't have to pay a price if things go sour. Years ago, during the savings and loan crisis, the principle of moral hazard was front and center; gamblers like Neil Bush, of Silverado Savings and Loan, flourished because buccaneers of his ilk were protected from the downside of their speculation by no-fault taxpayer-funded insurance. (No doubt that's what his brother the President meant in his first inaugural about ushering in an era of personal responsibility.) Today, the Fed's rescue of Bear Sterns -- the poster child of Wall Street greed and recklessness -- has brought "moral hazard" back to the fore. Bear Stearns says these guiding principles are the blueprint for how it does business: "respect, integrity, meritocracy, innovation and a commitment to philanthropy." In the wake of the bailout, maybe they should switch their motto to Alfred E. Newman's: "What, Me Worry?""

[littleoldme]

LOL. I mean really LOL.

[waldopaper]

You have two cows... and a "corporation."
You "sell" the cows to a "subsidiary" in your desk drawer for "$50 million" each.
Based on your $100 million in "capital," you "leverage" a loan for $150 million.
You buy 100 used 50-gallon drums, paint them brown and call them "Kowz.' (tm)
You fill them with white paint cut with ditch water and call it "Simumilk." (tm)
Based on your $250 million in "assets," you issue yourself 250 million shares of "preferred" at $1 a share.
Leak it to stock analysts that your "assets" have grown by 50,000 basis points.
Go public with an IPO... share prices hit $50. Sell your stock for $12 billion.
The 2 cows die because they haven't been fed since all this started. Write off a $4billion loss... no taxes.
Fake your own death and move to South America and set up a fiefdom with your own private army.
Thousands die from drinking Sumilk (tm)... the "banks" seize the empty oil drums.
Your friends in Congress bail out the banks... take a vacation to your fiefdom and watch you produce snuff-films.

[waldopaper]

That IS ironic... because over the next 2 weeks my English classes are going to get a crash course in "economics," ala Two Intellectual Systems.

Maybe korporat has been speaking in euphemisms so long... they don't even make sense to each other. I hope you have better fortune as a writer than I did as a business manager!

[waldopaper]

I guess art is a freedom of expression... you'd have to ask Bo or pan to elaborate on that... depends on if you want to "sell" any of it. Teaching is as free as I can make it... unfortunately (or not), we have to stick to "the material" or the "text." Some of us are fairly good at making (what at first appears to be) unlikely connections... but if the administration even gave a shit what we were doing (I used to think this was "academic freedom") they would put a stop to it immediately. That's what happened at one uni... because of "regime change." "Academic writing" is kind of a canker that perpetuates itself.

The student (IMnot soHO) should always be free to question. Unfortunately... that's beaten out of (most of) them by the time they get to "college." They simply expect a "to-do" list for "points." It's really the same paradigm as business: sell credit-hours for as much as possible while delivering them as cheaply as possible... and the whole system will soon break down for the same reason: how much more do you have to "make" to justify leaving school $100k in debt? Charging more and more for cheaper and cheaper can't go on forever.

[pan]

I have lots of freedom of expression - if I don't feel the need to get paid for my work and expertise.

How Children Fail

Reviewed by Kah Ying Choo

In his groundbreaking book, John Holt, draws upon his observations of children both in school and at play to identify ways in which our traditional educational system predestines our young people for failure.

Holt argues that children fail primarily "because they are afraid, bored, and confused." This, combined with misguided teaching strategies and a school environment that is disconnected from reality and "real learning", results in a school system that kills children’s innate desire to learn.

1. Fear and failure: Schools promote an atmosphere of fear – fear of failure, fear of humiliation, fear of disapproval - that most severely affects a student's capacity for intellectual growth. External motivation – rewards such as grades and gold stars – reinforces children’s fears of failing exams and receiving disapproval from the adults in their lives. Rather than learning the actual content of the lessons, students learn how to avoid embarrassment. This atmosphere of fear not only quells a child's love of learning and suppresses his native curiosity, but also makes him afraid of taking chances and risks which may be necessary for true learning to occur.

2. Boredom: Boredom serves as another major obstacle, blocking both the child’s innate motivation to learn and his love of learning. Before attending school, children feel free to explore and discover those things that interest them. But once the child becomes part of our modern school system, both the institutions and the parents unknowingly sabotage their child’s education. Schools demand that children perform dull, repetitive tasks which make limited demands on their wide range of capabilities; such demands may or may not be suitable to a particular child’s interests or needs.

Schools provide a ‘cookie-cutter’ education, which compels children to vie "for petty and contemptible rewards," rather than cultivate their intrinsic love of learning, which would serve to enhance their individual gifts and talents. Rather that forcing our children to adapt to a system which makes them consider learning a dreary and painful task, Holt advocates that children be encouraged to learn by following their natural curiosities and interests, without fear and guilt.

3. Confusion: Once enrolled in school, the child often founds himself being taught things that contradict what he has learned from his parents or other adults. Furthermore, the adults at school treat him very differently than the ones at home. This confusion is further exacerbated when a child, who is taught at home that curiosity is a positive and commendable thing, faces mockery and contempt from both teachers and fellow students for asking a question. Through his research, Holt has observed that most children – largely for fear of such ridicule – cease to ask questions by age ten.

4. Real Learning: Holt believes that "real learning" does not necessarily equate to mastering the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but rather, occurs when a child is encouraged to develop his own gifts and talents. Every expert has different views on what should be included in a child’s curriculum, and furthermore, much of what is taught in our schools is outdated by the time children need to apply that knowledge to real life. This reinforces Holt's belief that there is no single body of information that all children should learn.

[pan]

Quoting the author: "The proper place and best place for children to learn whatever they need or want to know is the place where, until very recently, almost all children learned it: in the world itself."

5. Strategies: Current teaching strategies cultivate a fear of
humiliation in children, and do more to harm young people than they do to meet their needs. Such fear drives students to develop various coping strategies or defense mechanisms - mumbling, acting like they don't understand, acting overly enthusiastic so they won't be called upon, etc - to dodge the demands placed upon them by adults, or to avoid being humiliated in front of their peers.

Holt concludes that there is a vast difference between what children really know, and what they only appear to know. Rather than learning the content of a lesson, children learn how to perform, or how to survive by deflecting the teacher’s questions with the least possible amount of embarrassment. Almost everything we do in our schools tends to make children ‘answer-centered,’ rather than ‘problem centered,’ which inadvertently deprives them of the skills that they need to function in the real world.

From the time of birth until the age of three years, children have a "tremendous capacity for learning, understanding, and creating." Adults – either through their own actions, or through excessively dictating their children’s actions - destroy most of the this intellectual and creative capacity. Most frequently, we destroy this capacity by making our children afraid; afraid of being wrong. Holt’s examination of our present educational system is a critical and insightful study, one which forces us to look more closely at the lessons that we are unwittingly imparting to our young ones.

[BO]

Freedom of expression is one of our constitutional values. But it certainly doesn't eliminate the freedom to be judged.

Few artists produce true art. Most have a particular audience (market) in mind that they create for. As soon as an artist applies his notion of what will bring his/her art acceptance, than they have established boundaries for their creativity. That's when art becomes a business.

The trick is in becoming famous and rich enough during your lifetime that you can actually do groundbreaking work. But then, no one ever becomes free from judgement. I suppose it's up to each of us to develop enough character to not give a shit. That's the only way to be free.

[waldopaper]

18-year-old teen sells virginity for $20,000+ ...it's only the beginning...

[waldopaper]

EM... mouse... what say YOU on "artistic freedom?"