Towards a More Perfect Moron

[phantom power]

Teabaggers rally to make America even stupider.

From the WaPo (h/t David Axelrod from the neighborhood):
Tea party groups mobilizing against Common Core education overhaul

By Peter Wallsten and Lyndsey Layton,
Published: May 30

Tea party groups over the past few weeks have suddenly and successfully pressured Republican governors to reassess their support for a rare bipartisan initiative backed by President Obama to overhaul the nation’s public schools.

....

....just as they need fresh troops to show up -- well-trained and ready to work on complex, expensive equipment -- businesses owners all over the country have discovered that -- just like our roads and bridges -- reinvesting in and updating our educational infrastructure has also been something we have spent the last 30 years blowing off.

We don't want to spend the time or the money it would take to do the job right. We don't want to face the fact that, as opportunities for women and minorities, the free market has lured away millions of potentially excellent teachers who have understandably opted not to spend a fortune on acquiring multiple degrees in order to live lives of near-poverty...all while being told they are personally responsible for solving every social problem in America at the same time they are being shit on by wingnuts for being "union thugs".

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2013/06/towards-more-perfect-moron.html

[patrice]

1. Hail! Hynkel! and the rise of Final Man . . .

. . . sorry all, just a little depressed here from watching some stupid alien/CIA conspiracy bullshit on a widely watched regional cable channel last-night.

[formercia]

2. Why is there never Time to do the job right the first time?

..when theres always time to do it over.

The Federal Government found that investing Money in the GI Bill to pay for the education of Veterans has been offset many times by the increased Tax Revenue resulting from better paying jobs and opportunities for advancement.

[phantom power]

3. aside from that being part of human nature...

in this case, about one-and-a-half of our two national parties has been captured by people who very explicitly don't want government to succeed at anything (except maybe force projection, and some of them seem to not even want that any more).

But in general, there's always a tension between getting things done quickly/cheaply, and getting them done well. In software, we have the saying "never time to write it properly, but always time to write it over". I'm sure it's not limited to programming.