Scott Shackford on Huffington Post Live at 5:30 P.M. Pacific (8:30 P.M. Eastern) to Discuss Parent Trigger Laws

Tune in this evening to hear me defend parents' rights to force changes upon public schools in a lively discussion at Huffington Post Live. Here's the way the Huffington Post describes parent-trigger laws:

Letting parents take greater control over failing schools sounds like an easy sell. But controversial "parent trigger" laws are raising questions around the country about the best way to do that without tipping the balance of power too far.

Do we actually have a balance of power at this point? I'll be arguing that we don't as yet. The link to the preview for the segment is here, along with links to coverage that has appeared at the Huffington Post.

Read Reason's coverage of parent trigger efforts here.

And here I am in all my glory:

Bonus: Here's a tweet following the chat with my debate buddy, Yasha Levine.

Comments

[Archduke Pantsfan]

Give em Hell, Shackford

[A Serious Man]

Oh boy:

Rona_BerryMorin4m
What's the benefit of Parent Trigger? Why not have the state take over when the school is failing?

Tony681m
When a school gets privatized, the principal's brother-in-law gets the roofing contract

Tony6811s
Rona_BerryMorin, They don't...it's right-wing propaganda that tells everyone that EVERYTHING should be privatized so THEY can take control and skim profits to THEMSELVES

Self-awareness is not a hallmark of liberal thinking, is it?

[RBS]

That first one is something else. Have the state take over something it already controls, brilliant!

[jesse.in.mb]

Just keep kicking it up to the next level, the district is mismanaging it, bump it to the state, when the state's schools are all failures let the feds take care of it. Eventually you'll find the right Top Men.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Just keep kicking it up to the next level, the district is mismanaging it, bump it to the state, when the state's schools are all failures let the feds take care of it. Eventually you'll find the right Top Men.

And that's exactly the thesis of the book, that I'm currently reading, on the history of school reform. I recommend it highly.

[Irish]

Tony6811s
Rona_BerryMorin, They don't...it's right-wing propaganda that tells everyone that EVERYTHING should be privatized so THEY can take control and skim profits to THEMSELVES

He has a point. The only reason I am in favor of school privatization is because I plan on getting rich with a charter school.

There is no easier way to make a shitload of money than to open a charter school in a low income neighborhood. The cash just rolls in!

[Paul.]

When a school gets privatized, the principal's brother-in-law gets the roofing contract

Uhh, no, that's what happens when the schools are public.

[Mickey Rat]

Wrong, that's when the Chairman of the School Board's brother-in-law gets the contact.

You must Get the beak wetting food chain right.

[Dweebston]

Knee-jerk liberal precepts populist pandering vs. preference for teacher's unions. Should be interesting.

Just kidding, I predict re-segregation fearmongering and copious "baby with the bathwater" arguments.

[CE]

Parent trigger laws? I thought they bought back all the toy guns already.

[Scott S.]

And I was all, "People actually talking about my appearance?" Ha ha ha ha ha. Silly me.

[Generic Stranger]

Did Yasha Levine say that you wanted to send him to the gas chambers, or did I misunderstand that tweet?

[Scott S.]

"Us." I assume he means everybody!

[Generic Stranger]

Yeah...I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I see I wasted my time.

What a bunch of weaselly shitheels.

[Irish]

That tweet is hilarious, Scott. I wish so badly that I could calmly express my opinion and drive progressives as insane as you do.

You have a talent, and I'm glad you haven't let it go to waste.

Also:

Letting parents take greater control over failing schools sounds like an easy sell. But controversial "parent trigger" laws are raising questions around the country about the best way to do that without tipping the balance of power too far.

Tipping the balance of power too far towards what? Tipping it too far in the direction of parent choice? Does Huffington Post not realize how ridiculously authoritarian this makes them sound?

[darius404]

Yasha Levine ?@yashalevine 1h

Just talked to school privatization flacks @ericlerum & @SShackford, who'd send us to gas chambers w same placid mugs

Yasha Levine ?@yashalevine 1h

@MarkAmesExiled @voraciousbrain Smug little trolls. They'd gas us all w same placid look on their faces.

WOW. Kids, take it from me: NEVER go full retard.

[SweatingGin]

They're projecting again.

[JW]

Those better be single-payer gas chambers.

It takes some seriously shit-addled thinking to be a governing member of the coming fascist state and accuse someone else of herding the populace in to the gas chambers. Do they really think they think won't be building them? At least I'll get some chuckles out the arguments over whether the showers will use sustainable materials and carbon-free energy.

Of course, this is the same gang who think that the unarmed making demands of the armed is going to work out well for them. Not the brightest lot.

[Irish]

Yasha Levine ?@yashalevine 1h
@voraciousbrain @MarkAmesExiled You can lobotomize a Koch monkey's brain and they'd still be able to perform at 100%.

Expand Reply Retweet Favorite More
Leigh Cowart ?@voraciousbrain 1h
@yashalevine @MarkAmesExiled nanobots!
Expand

Mark Ames ?@MarkAmesExiled 1h
@voraciousbrain @yashalevine You have to wonder where the Kochs scrape up these libertarian pigfuckers willing to smear teachers unions
Expand

Leigh Cowart ?@voraciousbrain 1h
@MarkAmesExiled @yashalevine I imagine that truckstop with the Pigfucking For Jesus feature is a good bet. I hear they take bitcoin.
Expand

Mark Ames ?@MarkAmesExiled 1h
@voraciousbrain @yashalevine No, Reason are the atheist baggertarians. They fuck pigs purely out of self-interest
Expand

Yasha Levine ?@yashalevine 1h
@MarkAmesExiled @voraciousbrain Market-based Pigfucking
Hide conversation Reply Retweet Favorite More

These people are mentally ill. They literally seem dangerous. How are they not in a padded room somewhere clawing at the invisible bugs that hatch and writhe beneath their skin?

You can't see the bugs, Darius, but YASHA LEVINE CAN! The bugs are everywhere, they harass and intimidate him, these bugs that were genetically engineered by the vile Kochtopus to attack good progressives like YASHA LEVINE!

[SweatingGin]

Now that is how you do a circle jerk. Wow. They must be exhausted.

[Gray Ghost]

They're even worse at their newspaper, the Exile. I used to read it frequently, back when it was still published in Russia, mainly for the War Nerd. Evidently Dolan got tired of the character and they gave it to someone else. Too bad; it really was the 'Psychology of War in 10 Easy Lessons.'

Ames is absolutely barking insane there. And not in a funny Hercule-way either. Levine had a nice story or two on the Inland Empire real estate rush, and the character they have doing movie reviews isn't too bad, but everything they write is a slave of their ideology.

It just gets old.

[VG Zaytsev]

These people are mentally ill. They literally seem dangerous. How are they not in a padded room somewhere clawing at the invisible bugs that hatch and writhe beneath their skin?

Because they're in classrooms teaching kids.

[darius404]

Oh, didn't see the edited in tweet. Silly me.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Right Said Fred Yasha Levine makes me ashamed to be half-Je...no scratch that...Yasha makes me ashamed that he is considered a human being just as we are.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just talked to school privatization flacks @ericlerum & @SShackford, who'd send us to gas chambers w same placid mugs

Now that's just unfair. In keeping with Mr. Levine's heritage, I just strip him of all of his property and send him to the gulag.

[Irish]

My favorite part is the use of the word 'placid.' All placid means is 'calm.' What he's basically arguing is that it was really bad that Scott was so calm during the debate.

'How dare someone calmly and rationally defend their point of view,' Yasha Levine seems to ask, 'when we all know that reasonable progressives are completely controlled by their emotions and are incapable of rational thought! The idea that someone could collect his thoughts and speak calmly frightens and perturbs me!'

[Some call me Tim?]

Too far away from teachers. Remember teachers are the best people this country has to offer. They are above reproach and any errors made are really errors made by the administration/poor parents/profiteering text book publishers.

If we really wanted to improve our education system we would allow the unquestioned benevolent rule of teachers in our schools.

[PapayaSF]

And unions are their representatives, and hence they are above reproach, too. They work only in the interests of the students, entirely selflessly.

OT: Moura El-Esmar, 51, and her daughter Jacinta, 16, try to smuggle nearly $60,000 in the the U.S. stuffed in their bras. She said most of the money came from "disability checks and her paper route."

[ThatSkepticGuy]

"I wish so badly that I could calmly express my opinion and drive progressives as insane as you do."

But you've had that power all along! All you ever had to do was close your eyes, click your heels three times, and say, "I disagree with your opinion"!

[darius404]

Oh, and they're also calling you a liar Scott:

Mark Ames ?@MarkAmesExiled 1h

So @SShackford from Kochs' Reason magazine lied on HuffPo Live, said CA teachers' union are thugs who intimidate & threaten to deport people
Retweeted by Yasha Levine

[Irish]

Yeah, what a crazy liar. It's not like The New York Times ran a story saying that this happened.

When parents began signing the petition last fall to replace McKinley Elementary School, several Latino parents said teachers had warned them that they could be deported if they did.

Why do white liberals think they can call Hispanic parents liars? Bunch of racists.

[SweatingGin]

I'm sure there will be a retraction.

Or maybe just say it was only reported in a right-wing tea bagger nut job rag.

[darius404]

Ok, I have to stop looking at his Twitter feed. I'm either going to give myself an aneurism or destroy my teeth. What a bunch of mindless assholes.

[SweatingGin]

Wow, apparently I missed out: Kochs!

Kochs!

[cavalier973]

So @SShackford from Kochs' Reason magazine lied on HuffPo Live, said CA teachers' union are thugs who intimidate & threaten to deport people

"When parents began signing the petition last fall to replace McKinley Elementary School, several Latino parents said teachers had warned them that they could be deported if they did."

[All-Seeing Monocle]

If there's one thing progressives really hate, it's smugness.

[JW]

They don't like the competition.

[Archduke Pantsfan]

is that a euphamism?

[PS]

+1 backpfeifengesicht

[Eduard van Haalen]

So why couldn't the producers of the show find a parent who *supported* the trigger law? If only there were some documents available with lists of parents who supported the closing of failing schools...the producers could have called one of those parents and had him or her on the show.

[Binjelli]

The projection is strong in those tweets.

[cavalier973]

Just talked to school privatization flacks @ericlerum & @SShackford, who'd send us to gas chambers w same placid mugs

???

...non-carbonated coffee?

flat beer?

Why would someone's drinking apparatus be considered...

Oh, he means face. He must be a 1930's Chicago gangster.

[cavalier973]

Also, the gas would probably be over $4.00 a gallon.

Lousy, stinkin' gougers.

[Warrren]

He's crackers, see?

[Irish]

Lousy, stinkin' gougers.

Kulaks and wreckers are always disrupting the plans for our grand socialist utopia.

[Warrren]

The worst thing that will happen to them in a non-coercive, all-voluntary society is that they will be ignored.

[cavalier973]

Being ignored when one has Something Important To Say is the same as being murdered by a racist.

[VG Zaytsev]

Yasha's complaint is that community organizers are involved in activating the parental trigger and that they often act like union organizers(absent the state approved violence.

[VG Zaytsev]

The dumb cunt parent is mad that they took over her school without involving her. Or some such bullshit.

[A Serious Man]

Speaking of statist idiots, I'm arguing with this guy on a friend's Facebook post (she posted an article on gun violence):

Back to answer your point, it (the total confiscation of guns in America) is fully possible. And the war on drugs and alcohol are completely different than this. One is an addictive substance where the government went about trying to strong arm it instead of fixing the problem and stopping it before the problem arrises. Guns are an entirely different situation with a different solution.

And a) Not entirely, except by a terrible recent SCOTUS ruling. A well regulated militia is constitutionally protected. But what the founders what is long past us, unless you want a citizens to have the right to own a tank, apache helicopter, or nuclear weapon. Thomas Jefferson said that we need to rewrite the constitution every 19 years, I say we start with that second amendment. Because the idea of "life" comes many lines before the right to bear arms.

[Irish]

Back to answer your point, it (the total confiscation of guns in America) is fully possible. And the war on drugs and alcohol are completely different than this. One is an addictive substance where the government went about trying to strong arm it instead of fixing the problem and stopping it before the problem arrises. Guns are an entirely different situation with a different solution.

I keep hearing this argument, and it's always stupid. What these people don't get is that we aren't making a one to one comparison between guns and drugs and claiming that they're the same. We're making a comparison between the issue of prohibiting guns and prohibiting drugs.

A basic fact of human nature is that you cannot ban something that people really want. Since criminals really want guns, they will make them themselves in underground gun smiths or they will smuggle them into the country.

Prohibitionists are morons. Whenever someone points out all the examples of prohibition failing, they try their hardest to come up with reasons that this item is slightly different than all those other items we've prohibited in the past, which is why prohibition will work this time. What they never consider is that the item is irrelevant. It is prohibition which fails, completely without regard for what the item is. This has always been true.

[VG Zaytsev]

The prohibition on automatic weapons has been pretty successful.

[kbolino]

Only because there are suitable alternatives (semi-autos). You can change what drugs are in vogue by cracking down on certain ones, but people will still be getting high.

[VG Zaytsev]

I think a lot of the drug warriors would be fine with people switching from drugs to alcohol.

[Boisfeuras]

But what the founders what is long past us, unless you want a citizens to have the right to own a tank, apache helicopter, or nuclear weapon.

This is pure sophistry. The framers clearly meant personal arms?muskets, rifles, and sidearms?that you could "bear" on your person. You cannot "bear" a tank.

[darius404]

Of course you can, you just can't carry it in your hands or arms like you would with small arms (note that "small arms" is an actual term, denoting that there are also "large" arms"). Artillery pieces can't be carried, but private individuals DID own those back in Revolutionary times. That they weren't hand-held weapons doesn't indicate they aren't covered.

[Tejicano]

Further understand that you are talking specifically about military arms when you state "musket".

A musket is not much of a hunting arm - neither a rifle nor a fowler. It is designed to be reloaded quickly and used by massed troops for volley fire. It is the military issue weapon of its day.

So people who argue that the second amendment is "about muskets" are correct in one sense - but the reality is that the contemporary equivalent is a select fire assault rifle. So when the proglodites argue that "musket" line they are actually not only supporting most of what the NRA wants but they are also arguing to strike the NFA from the books.

[Boisfeuras]

A well regulated militia is constitutionally protected.

The militia in the 2A is the armed citizenry, which would organize itself in time of war. You only have to look at what the Founders and their contemporaries wrote:

"What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins."
- Elbridge Gerry

"[A regular army] would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence."
- James Madison

"Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves. ... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments but, where I trust in God it will always remain, in the hands of the people."
- Tench Coxe

"[T]he British parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people. That it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them. ... Why should we not provide against the danger of having our militia, our real and natural strength, destroyed?"
- George Mason

[Boisfeuras]

Moreover, the first part of the Second Amendment ("A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state") is purely explanatory for the purpose of the amendment, which is unequivocal in preserving the right of the people to possess and carry arms. See here for an analysis of its grammatical formulation.

[ThatSkepticGuy]

"One is an addictive substance where the government went about trying to strong arm it instead of fixing the problem and stopping it before the problem arrises."

I'd ask what the shitbag felt the "problem" and "solution" to the existence of alcohol is, but I have a strong feeling it involves lots and lots of Sin Taxes, and the oppressive evils of people being allowed to spend the money they worked for on things they enjoy.

[VG Zaytsev]

Yasha says that parent revolution has spent $7million in CA over 4 years pushing parental choice. That's less per year than the CTA spends in a few counties on local elections. It's also less than the yearly budget for a small grade school in CA.

[Irish]

And regardless of how much money they've spent, who cares? Oh, I forgot. Progressives only want people to be allowed to spend money on speech that they approve of.

[ThatSkepticGuy]

"Letting parents take greater control over failing schools sounds like an easy sell. But controversial "parent trigger" laws are raising questions around the country about the best way to do that without tipping the balance of power too far."

As always, Huff 'n Puff is useful for a bit of capsulated neoLiberalism 101; Everything should be run and managed by TEH PEEPLE, just so long as the people don't have so much power that the government can't just step in and circumvent whatever they achieve. That would be too much Absolute Power in the hands of the people, and unfair to the government. For, you see, the Government is Us.

[WomSom]

Downright scary stuff man, for real!

http://www.AnonStuff.tk

[Calidissident]

I see American is off his meds again

[David Emami]

...kick out the troublemakers...

That would have been just fine with me, when I was in school. Why should those of us who were actually interested in learning have had to tolerate the jerks?

But putting all the blame on the teachers and the "school system", instead of where it belongs, on the students themselves and their parents, is as bad as the democrats who blame it on the rich for not paying their "fair share."

I don't deny that a decent chunk of blame lies with the students and parents, but the curriculum and teaching methods are definitely deteriorating. I can see a distinct difference between my own (mostly public) schooling and what my nephews get, in some cases in the same exact schools. For example, a few years ago, one of them (in 8th grade) was doing a book report. He had several options, one of which was to make a clay diorama of a scene in the book. This was for an alleged English class, not Art. And he was not going to some strapped, violent, inner-city school. This was in a pretty comfortable medium-sized town.

[CharlesWT]

American Indian Model Schools: Demographics

? 46% Asian
? 23% African-American
? 22% Latino
? 3% American Indian/Alaskan Native
? < 2% Caucasian, Pacific Islander, Filipino

[RBS]

What point would that be?

[Irish]

Why don't you actually address my point?

The one where you say 'I would never send my kid to a black or Mexican school?' Because it's a pretty shitty point, even if you aren't America.

By the way, showing up and dropping a wall of text that includes a discussion of your disdain for blacks and Mexicans is a good way to get called American.

[Some call me Tim?]

Why don't you actually address my point?

Wahhhhh Why wont you engage my racism????

[Anonymous Coward]

What is your point, aside from you hating brown people?

[Calidissident]

What point? Do you actually think charter schools in inner cities don't have black and Hispanic students? It wouldn't surprise me if you actually believed that, because you're a fucking moron

[VG Zaytsev]

Calling everyone American is starting to get old. Why don't you actually address my point?

Ok I will.

The point of a charter school in many cases is to kick out the troublemakers, kick out the (literally) retarded, and not have the kid whose parent didn't enroll her kid in the school because she was too stoned too worry about it. What they are doing is taking the cream off the milk. And, in a country where EVERYTHING is racial, that means the charters get the whites, the public schools get the blacks and Mexicans.

Implies that only whites care about the education of their children, which is an inherently racist assertion.

And it completely ignores the fact that any amount of competition in public schools will make all schools better over time, not just the newer charter schools.

Having said that, I do agree that a very large part of the problem with public schools in lower middle class and poor areas is a refusal to deal with the small percentage of kids that are disruptive troublemakers.

[jesse.in.mb]

Is it ever on them?

It was using the handle "racist" earlier.

[jesse.in.mb]

Clearly it's that our schools would be better if we drove all of the brown people back to their equatorial countries where they can laze around and get malaria, as is their wont. Duh, RBS.

[Francisco d Anconia]

It's him.

[Generic Stranger]

Fuck off you racist scumbag.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think housing costs are so expensive in white communities compared to black communities? Because NO ONE WANTS TO LIVE AROUND THOSE PEOPLE. If there were a black or Mexican school where the children behaved like whites

a group of good, gawd fearin white kids

Fuck off to LRC, you racist shitweasel.

[Heroic Mulatto]

The one on the left, never. The one on the right, certainly.

[JW]

Devolution looks nothing like DEVO made it out to be.

[Irish]

We don't call you a racist out of a sense of political correctness. We call you a racist because it's factually accurate.

[JeremyR]

The problem isn't with skin color, so much as cultural.

I went to a public school in the suburbs, maybe 5% of the class were blacks. They were no different than any other kid in terms of behavior or learning.

Then when we reached Jr High and High School, we had black kids bussed in from the city.

They were completely different. Were they any dumber? No, but for some reason, internal pressure, they were expected to behave different. Anyone who actually tried to learn was accused of trying to be white. And of course, they didn't get along at all with blacks from the suburbs.

[General Butt Naked]

I think the reason this motherfucker pisses me off so much that he's such a fucking pussy about it. I mean, it you're gonna be a racist, just fucking do it.

Grow a fucking pair and say that you don't like niggers already, stop trying to dress up your worldview in pussy-ass arguments. Be a fucking man, brandon, you fucking punk.

[General Butt Naked]

I looked it up in Webster's and all it said was "See: Brandon Smith".

It said the same thing under "pussy", "punk", and "bitch".

[Heroic Mulatto]

Definition of RACISM
1. a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race

[General Butt Naked]

My dictionary is totally different than that, but I don't use the liberal redbone version. I use the AMERICAN dictionary.

Definition of RACISM
1. a word used by libruls, spix and the blacks to hide how great the white race is

[Irish]

Truth. I'm reminded of Cory Booker's run against Sharpe James for Newark mayor in 2002. Sharpe James basically ran a campaign claiming that Harvard educated Cory Booker was an Uncle Tom who had too many white friends to be trusted in black Newark communities. He also claimed Booker was collaborating with 'the Jews' to take over Newark.

Sharpe James won that election.

That's the saddest thing. Black people are victimized in the inner cities by race hustling Democrats and are basically forced into failure because poorly educated blacks will keep voting Democrat. Instead of pointing out the obvious racism of the Democratic party and actually trying to rectify the situation, many conservatives actually do behave like racists and assume that there's something 'inherent' in black people that makes them fail.

So no one bothers fixing the problem because everyone is okay with the Democrats continual abuse of inner city African Americans. It's disgusting.

[Heroic Mulatto]

^This^

And you're not going to change the Culture of Poverty merely by taking these children out of their neighborhoods and exposing them to the suburbs for a mere 6 to 8 hours a day. All you're going to do is exacerbate feelings of jealousy, inferiority, and alienation.

[cavalier973]

I think a lot of this might be rememdied were the "War on Drugs" abandoned.

[Heroic Mulatto]

I think that's the definition in the Microsoft Word spell check dictionary too.

The talking paperclip was always such an asshole to me.

[Archduke Pantsfan]

es!

[darius404]

Are you blind?

And, in a country where EVERYTHING is racial, that means the charters get the whites, the public schools get the blacks and Mexicans. The thing that people want to avoid is not the "bad teachers" it is the black and Mexican poor kids who would be a bad influence. I'm not saying that this is bad per se. After all, I would never want to send my kid to a black or Mexican school.

We get the same guy, day after day, posting racial shit in some discussion or another. He got banned months ago under the monker "American", and now he comes back with different alts and IPs to continue in spite of the ban. Today alone he's used several aliases. We're pretty sure it's all the same guy because he posts literally the same sort of stuff over and over. The part about not wanting to ever put his child in "a black or Mexican school" is one of the things he's said before, almost word for word.

[VG Zaytsev]

Yeah, I think you're completely wrong. I had a number of family members that went to crappy Memphis schools with predictable results. The ones that got out ultimately had academic success and have gone on to upper middle class lifestyles. The ones that didn't have mostly been sucked into the underclass. And I'm talking about different results for siblings so the difference wasn't parental involvement or genetics or race or anything else other than the crappy schools there.

[MJGreen]

He's not blind, he just has multiple personality disorder. Each one racist and supportive of the other's arguments.

[Calidissident]

And of course, whenever American resurfaces and is inevitably criticized, there are always a couple random first time posters who jump to his defense

[VG Zaytsev]

Because casual readers and lurkers outnumber habitual posters 500 or 1,000 to one.

Which is why it's counter productive to just hurl ad hominems at them. Besides, the tendency to see every new weirdo as American and / or Mary is kind of Aspy and pathetic.

[ThatSkepticGuy]

"Why should those of us who were actually interested in learning have had to tolerate the jerks?"

Because those "jerks" are all on the football team, the financial and moral support of which is the only reason high school exists.