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Democracy is not a spectator sport. If America continues to spend 1,000% more time watching tv than informing themselves on local, regional and national issues, someday they'll wake up and see that a highly centralized, powerful government will be in place where voting is no longer "necessary."
Stick to training birds. If Romney were in the White House it would be higher because the rich stick together. There is a collusion among oil industry giants. They have a MONOPOLY on gas and they can set any frickin' price they want, AND THEY'RE DOING IT. They're experimenting with the Northwest to see if we'll put up with it. And of course we will because we've been brainwashed to blame whoever the hell's in the White House. Wake up America! The FREE MARKET with no controls on Wall Street are bleeding us out. There are five major U.S. oil companies calling the shots. If there were five major shoe companies only the rich would be wearing them. The rest of us would be barefoot.
Corporations and the wealthy smell blood. They're taking this country down and returning it to where the wealthy run the show and the rest of us can sleep 12 to a room. Education is becoming the exclusive domain of the rich. The dark shadow of widespread poverty is sweeping across what was once a great nation. The wealthy have just about boiled the frog.
Don't ya just love a free for all over fingerprinting keeping our schools only slightly less underfunded!? The American News Media doesn't report on the countries whose kids are whoopin' ours in math, science, creativity and resources to build a world economy. Corporate news ownership have the American public locked in the closet so fools can fight each other rather than figure out why suddenly the country is broke. It ain't the unions and it ain't the deficit. It's the fact the country doesn't have the resources to be the country it used to be. The rich and the corporations aren't paying taxes for schools or anything else. They're running monopolies, sending their money overseas to take advantage of slave labor in Asia and then dumping their profits in offshore banks where our treasury tax them. What's left of the failing middle class in this country pays at a rate three to 10 times what the wealthy are paying. DIS-GUSTING!
Yup...we're on our way to having a school system just like Mexico. And our future workers will be working in jobs just like Mexico. The problem isn't unions. It's the rich starving this country to death of money needed to even have a frickin' country. Stupidity among these comment pages has obviously risen to obscenely high levels.
Wish this same ability to review natural gas rates could apply to regular gasoline prices. Now THERE'S a thought!
Mr. Rose: Severely buried lead.
...ANOTHER THOUGHT...typically when TV stations sell, they begin whacking back in the newsroom because they have to improve the profitability of the station in order to make their mortgage on their acquisition. So if you see a few more wrecks, or sleazy murders or longer traffic and weather reports, you'll know what the new owner's strategy is. TV is financial real estate like a luxury home. It's just money. yet democracy needs meaningful information for intelligent public discourse. Fortunately there are news websites popping up all over the internet. Maybe there's hope.
U-I: You're totally correct. I spent 23 years in broadcast TV in small towns and in Sacramento, San Francisco and LA...and the old saying, if it bleeds, it leads, is the iron fist of TV news management. TV newsrooms gave up real news decades ago. TV programming, regardless of the time of day, is all about ATTRACTING EYEBALLS. When you look at the ratings, the number one station in a city may have 15% of the audience and be thunderously number 1. That's 85% of the town not watching. The others may have 10 or 8%, leaving the vast majority of the city NOT EVEN WATCHING THE NEWS. People get tired of seeing wreck after wreck, murder after murder, stupid live shot after stupid live shot. But with a 15, 10 or 8, you can make millions upon millions of dollars DOING NOTHING, or close to it. The FCC was one of the first federal "regulatory agencies" to be DOMINATED by those it regulates. You may have noticed that the SEC was the latest to fall, and with it the economy. Americans are growing more and more stupid due to a lack of meaningful information affecting their lives and are getting more and more LESS NEWS everyday. I remember when TV station owners sweat bullets during FCC license renewal periods. Today, the general manager's 3rd string secretary mails in the post card. KA-CHING!! Approved.
Why don't you add to your smirky list. Don't just pick on sociology. Slam philosophy, semantics, english, literature, art, political science and more. That is why this country is in such bad shape. People that ridicule education are thinking with their training how to work. Work is PART of being human. Obviously you think the other side of being human is just sucking on a screen with the word FOX on it.
Here's a thought. The biggest problem with nuclear energy are the reckless thugs involved in it. For all we know, nuclear energy could be a viable energy source but we'll never know until somebody figures out which genie to believe.
There is a presumption here by many commenters that there is something DEFECTIVE about these people. What's DEFECTIVE is our response to them, knowing what we know, yet not having the moral fiber or the strength of character to build a safety net for the mentally ill, economic downtrodden and the hopeless and homeless. There is utterly no excuse for our reaction to the homeless and hopeless. We could care for the least among us and return them to wholeness without even being a blip on our country's economic radar screen. YET WE DON'T DO IT! WHAT....DOES....THAT....MAKE....US? And we call ourselves a Christian nation. HA!
Yes! How dare those derelict overpaid cops try to save our lives! It's just MORE GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE IN OUR LIVES!! FREEDOM!! LIBERTY!! IF I KILL YOU OR YOUR KID IT'S MY GOD GIVEN RIGHT!!
Oh...when the private sector trains their employees it's called "investing," but when the public sector "invests" in education it's called "spending." Hatred of government is a sickness from a virus spread by the super wealthy through their media outlets. Unfortunately shallow thinking and on-the-surface analysis is being confused with constructive discussion. I pray this November that the country gets off the dime (the penny, in today's economy) and elects a Congress that aren't a bunch of parrots being fed crackers by the rich.
Social Security and Medicare were paid forward by the Boomers. The fact that greed heads have raided the social security fund and are opposed to universal health care is the problem. This cartoon is beyond reasonable limits of sarcasm. It's out and out propaganda. Over....the....top.
Rather comically, such rulings appear to violate THE PUBLIC'S due process and equal protection rights, instead of the usual other way around. Rather than snorting and trumpeting how gay the mayor is and all the rest of the baloney that passes for thoughtful comments in Oregonian comment boxes, the reporter should have included, or should include within one or two days, an assessment of the chances of the fix being approved by the next legislature. That would give a clearer picture of the issue.
Although the judge may be elderly, he knows the difference between right and wrong, and that a sin, NO MATTER HOW LONG AGO COMMITTED, remains a sin.
Look at that photo. A tanker driver pumping gas into an underground tank. Now. Close your eyes. Imagine the underground tank turning into a large charging station where newly charged batteries on trays are exchanged for drained batteries coming out of cars that drive up for a "battery change." The cars drive up, the tray rises up (just like in an oil changing station), the tray of old batteries are unclipped, they drop down, the tray rotates, a new set of charged batteries rise and are clipped into place, the driver swipes his/her debit or "charge" card, and they're down the road in less time than they can use the restroom. Don't need the world's most expensive military in the history of the planet to protect it. But WE MUST DECIDE TO USE OUR BRAINS INSTEAD OF RELYING ON HABIT.
I've got a feeling that when Americans finish paying off their debt (the ones that don't file for bankruptcy) will not run out and start charging again because the banking industry won't let them. The banks know that they'll get far better returns in overseas markets than they will from a jobless, wage-depressed country like the late, great United States. There will be no return to "normal" because THIS is the new new normal.
This is another clear example of the collapse of American society. Back in the days when America really believed in equal opportunity, we decided, (and the Supreme Court actually helped) to create a standard for education. It didn't matter where a child lived, that child got access to a first rate education. EDUCATION made America great and nothing else. Shouts of USA!, USA!, USA! may work at the Olympics but America's standard of excellence in education was the rocket fuel that got us to the moon and nothing else. To have to start fundraising for teachers is the crack of a judges gavel...GUILTY OF NATIONAL NEGLECT! We're all busted. We've become a nation of TV watchers and distracted children incapable of running a country. Who but a nation of crazies would worship the rich while their own lives, and their children's education go down the drain. Bake sales for teachers!? The military doesn't hold bake sales for fighter jets to steal other countries' oil. We don't need to be spending nearly a quarter of our nation's budget protecting other peoples' oil THAT WE DON'T EVEN NEED. Battery powered cars with swappable battery trays like at oil changing stations, could usher in a near oil-free economy within five years. Bake sales for teachers? It would be hilarious if it wasn't so deeply tragic.
God bless all those caseworkers who are obviously doing their best while they're "sweeping in a dust storm." Our society must decide if we want to raise tomorrow's good citizens and community leaders or just a new flock for our prison system. America is troubled, and has been troubled, for a very long time. Declining wages, inaccessible education, alcohol and drug addiction, propensity to violence, creeping hopelessness, the emptiness of blind consumption...it's all taking a damaging toll on our children and the parents who are not competent to take care of themselves, much less the children they bring into the world. I hope this recession knocks some sense into us that chasing sales at the local mall is an empty lifestyle. And kids instinctively know it. We, as a nation, need to have a long talk with ourselves. It's all related. When you're too busy buying crap you don't need, or talking with your friends about buying crap you don't need, you're ignoring your kid(s). Abuse and neglect can be overt, or very subtle. But it all adds up.
Her right to mine comes from immigrants from the east looking for plunder? OH REALLY!! Now there is a reason we can all bow down to and worship! Find a real job!
What you fail to realize is that the cost of NOT PLANNING is far more expensive FOR THE REST OF US. Runaway, free-for-all approach to land use, is the most ugly, the most expensive, the most destructive expressions of human greed there is. Hooray for me and **** YOU! If you want Los Angeles, MOVE THERE! If you want the good life where people and intelligent land use thrive, stay. Take off your ME, ME, ME GLASSES and do a little homework.
Another high school graduate whose TV remote control is stuck on FOX NEWS.
God bless her for caring so much she'd haul the kids around to see colleges. But with costs so high and climbing (especially at Linfield and other private colleges) few on the bus are unlikely to see the inside of a college again. America has raised three generations of people who think college is for snobs and liberals. The core of our society is being hollowed out by the insensitive and greedy rich, while they bar education for millions. Without it America is destined to become another Mexico. Higher education is not only a right it is a necessary utility no less than clear air, clean water and nutritious food. It is what allows us to be fully human and to grow and thrive. It's being denied as a weapon of class warfare, to enforce an economic darkness with only a few at the top in control. But even they don't see the sun; only the jaundiced shimmering glows of each others' greedy egos through the blackened mist.
Okay....through this line of logic, there should be NO taxes unless EVERY government worker makes exactly what is voted on by the public, and that NO taxes should be collected unless and until every high ranking government official passes the smell test of "common sense," a rather easy thing to do, no??
Although it'll never happen, no one without a college degree should be allowed into these comment boxes. No nothing "know-it-alls" are allowed to make way too much noise when the community is trying to find answers. And yes, nobody makes more noise than drunken football fans when their team's opponents are about the kick the winning field goal. Most of these thunk-head noise-makers don't know the difference between football and life.
You have more than Fox News as a chronic source of oligarchic noise.
A medical industry that demands the bulk of its members become MILLIONAIRES at the expense of American citizens who are not millionaires is a predator on society. Medical care is a right, not a privilege. America is among the least healthy members of the so-called "advanced countries" in the world. Our medical system costs us a lot more for much worse medical outcomes. IT'S TIME FOR CHANGE.
Here we go again. EVERYBODY IS SQUEEZED...management, teachers and the public. It's like being at a picnic where the invisible hand of those who don't pay their fair share of taxes (corporations and the super-wealthy) leave so little food on the table that the news media reports on the fight over scraps rather than realizing that there's not enough food. This country used to have plenty of money for what made it great. Today, the powerful 400 families that run the U.S.A. hardly take notice of the warring VICTIMS in the streets who can't properly run a school district without more revenue and those who can't run classrooms (or their households) with already slashed budgets. YOU DON'T PUT FIRES OUT BY SQUIRTING WATER ON THE FLAMES. YOU SOAK WHAT'S BURNING. And what's burning is America and we better learn how to be better firemen. We need to admit that rather than fighting each other, we need to revamp our country's business plan to where there is enough money to EVEN HAVE A COUNTRY. Think BIG CAUSES, not LOCAL DRAMA.
House Republicans are a bunch of snakes. While schools are closing, millions are out of work, our country's roads, bridges and highways are crumbling, these GOP delusional retards are throwing more borrowed Chinese money at bombs we don't need, planes we can't afford, and a foreign policy that doesn't work. Will it take the whole world to hate us until we restore our country to something close to sanity? The military and its supporters in the Congress are running the show. Dwight Eisenhower said it best in 1958 when he said, sounding much like Abe Lincoln in 1864..."This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."