“The bus driver’s packing. The nurse is packing. The counselor is packing. The gym teacher is packing. The assistant coach who’s working there four hours a day, he’s packing. Everybody’s fully armed. They don’t have the technology necessary to provide a 21st-century education for the children, but they’re fully loaded. … Think about it. Is that what we really want to be?” – Sen. Vincent Hughes, D-Philadelphia quoted in Pa. Senate OKs bill to let school workers have guns [via Idnews.com]
Bravo to them. Finally a smart school system!
Straw man argument. Presumably, the guns will be personal property and not paid for by taxpayers.
If you’re that concerned about the quality of education for your constituents, you could, you know, lobby for an increase in spending on technology and quality educators. The voters in your district might actually like that one.
Except there isn’t much correlation between school spending and educational outcomes.
That’s just Hughes being a Democrat.
Increased spending rarely improves education. Getting rid of incompetent teachers, reducing the number of useless administrators and requiring parental participation will do more for improving the quality of education than more wasted dollars.
Not beingable to fire bad teachers due to teachers unions is a lot bigger problem then funding.
It goes both ways (as I have personally seen)
Sometimes they attempt to wrongfully fire good, or GREAT teachers, because they are perceived as old and out-dated (even if still effective) or are too expensive to pay with earned wages (+ retirement) compared to wet-behind-the-ears graduates, or (too often) won’t play ball with the ridiculous directives from state and superintendents.
Bad teachers should go, quickly and with no fanfare or muss, but decent professionals who are intent on educating our children honestly should be reasonably protected from political administrators.
Problem seems to be, common sense and common ground are rare to find these days.
They should spend more time teaching the children than worry about carrying a gun. Education is pretty crappy as it is.
But you’re overlooking the important things that American students are fully indoctrinated on global warming and how to put condoms on cucumbers.
Everyone who is willing, qualified, and able should carry.
“They don’t have the technology necessary to provide a 21st-century education” Maybe if the damn unions would be disbanded there would be money for these things.
The unions are what ensure that administration doesn’t hire family and friends as teachers. Instead you end up with hard-working teachers who are well qualified. PA teachers are some of the best trained in the nation; they should be paid for their level of ability. The issues with education are the student/teacher ratio in the classroom and support at home. No matter how hard you work in the classroom, if there’s no support at home you’re just spinning your wheels.
I gotta throw the BS flag here. Unions do not ensure better qualified teachers. They protect the unqualified.
I have come to realize unions are much like socialism. In theory, they are a great idea, but in practice, they are not so good.
I have several teacher friends and once you make it into the teachers union you basically can’t be fired, unless you do something bad enough to get arrested.
Unions stifle free market and eliminate competition, drive up the cost of Goods sold (education in this case) and lower performance standards. They also are a method of controlling people.
Unions, not Japan, are responsible for the fall of the American made automobile. They are the reason China makes so many goods that used to be made here. (Can anyone tell I’m not a fan? 🙂
Seems hypocritical, since the end game of any capitalist corporation is the same as the evil ends you claim (monopoly)
And they have faaaaaaar more resource and opportunity to realize it.
But if you’d rather have a 60+ hour week with no holidays, breaks, insurance, workman’s comp, safety regulations, fair wages, etc…
Have fun in the mines, bud.
“Seems hypocritical, since the end game of any capitalist corporation is the same as the evil ends you claim (monopoly)
And they have faaaaaaar more resource and opportunity to realize it.
But if you’d rather have a 60+ hour week with no holidays, breaks, insurance, workman’s comp, safety regulations, fair wages, etc…
Have fun in the mines, bud.”
Even though it’s not actually not hypocritical at all, since it’s the state that IS the only entity that even has the power, resources, and opportunity to create monopolies in the first place. This is because, as can be seen in every legislature on the face of the planet, politicians are universally simply whores for sale to the highest bidder.
The less power the politicians have, the less influence that can be purchased, thus the less control they have. It’s really that simple. That is why small government is the best government to have, if there is to be any government at all.
Oh, and the conditions you describe are better attributed to circumstances where the government has complete and total control. Like, say, under full socialism or communism. Those improvements in working conditions were already well on their way in, anyway, and would have been realized within that generation (the next at the very latest), before unions started sprouting up, regardless.
You can have fun in the gulag, “bud.” =)
Also, to the unions in DEADTroit, the quality of the products their members assembled didn’t even matter to them, and they made it a point to quash any talk of it, too. The only thing that had EVER mattered to them was how much control they could exert over Goobermint Motors (and thus the goobermint itself) and how much their Fat Cat leadership could line their pockets with kickbacks and membership dues. THAT’S IT. Domestic brands were (and still are) also so much more expensive because people were paid much more than their counter-parts in Japan and other countries merely to hang doors for 20+ years, instead of being shipped all around the factory to learn every part of the process of assembly and be expected to fill most any role necessary on the line, among a litany of other reasons.
Also, Unions and Japan certainly did not help Detroit, but it was their poor to terrible accounting, marketing, engineering, and most of all toxic corporate and development culture of “It doesn’t matter, we’re on top and these idiots will buy whatever we push out and put on shiny lots” that “did them in”
I’m from MI, looking back, I don’t know if saving them was the right decision, more than just “precedent”
Have you DRIVEN a “domestic” ’05-’08?…
Nope. I live in a somewhat nepotistic town. The MEA doesn’t prevent those with local connections, especially to the school board president, from being hired. About all the union is good for is preventing you from firing a union teacher to make an opening for friends/family, the locally connected will always have first shot at the openings (and there are plenty of openings available for outsiders, it’s a small town and we aren’t at the top of the pay scale here).
“City will spend $29 million on salaries, benefits of educators it can’t fire”
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/city-spend-29m-paying-educators-fire-article-1.1477027
My wife’s a teacher in PA. In my opinion you are kind of half right – what the union haters kind of miss is that school boards mostly suck. In most places nobody pays attention to the school boards and they are interested in either 1) saving money or 2) more money in high school athletics. That’s great and my daughter is a young athlete, but it is not what students really need. Does the union protect crappy teachers? Absolutely – it’s part of their job almost. The real problems are 1. All the money wasted on bureaucracy and people that don’t teach. 50% of the professional people in teaching are bureaucrats in Harrisburg. Why??? Save the money for more teachers and more tech. 2. The BS lawsuits against schools that result in no willingness to actually enforce standards. It should not be about pleasing loud parents and 3. paying for schools with property tax, which means rich schools get good funding, poor schools don’t. Kind of pathetic for something they argue is “public”.
“They don’t have the technology necessary to provide a 21st-century education for the children, but they’re fully loaded.”
They don’t? While money and tech vary greatly from school district to school district, on average more money is spent on American students than almost anywhere in the world. We are towards the top in terms of money towards education. And staff carrying their own weapons cost schools nothing except maybe paperwork. Vincent Hughes response is to spend more money and hire armed security guards – guards who do not protect students, teachers, or staff on their way to or from school.
“Is that what we really want to be?” – collectivist speak right there.
Typical Democrat thinking. “Better that children should die than anyone on Campus have a gun to defend them with.”
Ok, lets home school instead. Tax payer dollars go back to tax payers. We spare our children a secular humanist ideology and mom and dad can be armed all we want.
If they stopped at secular humanism very few objections could be legitimately raised, since it’s pretty much our national ethos: libertarian secular humanism. The problem begins when SH is used and perverted as a spring board for various leftist ideologies that aren’t SH, or even logical offshoots of it, but rather follow a pattern of inverted nationalism and ultimately a nihilistic worldview that wants to destroy whatever is.
Leftists in the US are like underpants gnomes in South Park: Step One; destroy everything that exists, Step Two;????, Step Three; bask in the glory of utopia.
They can also be thought of as children, yearning to be free of their parents control: They chaff at going to bed and eating their vegetables, but left to thier own devices they will quickly lose the use of the wonderous things the disciplined parents provided, sicken and eventually die.
Just please don’t blame secular humanism, it’s not the problem, it’s not even a gateway to leftist ideology, it’s merely an attempt at explaining what actually is, and how we might effectively interact with reality. From there one can proceed in many directions, and joining a nihilistic death cult is but one aberrant example.
If Christianity less than equals stoning gays or participating in crusades, then SH less than equals adopting leftist ideology. Both are merely examples of what can go wrong with any ideology.
If you’d like an example, my beliefs incorporate much of SH, but I hate leftists more than just about anyone here but pwrserge, and I’d consider investing in pwrserge airlines if I thought the market were right.
SH out to more naturally lead to something like enlightened libertarianism, with a dose of rational self interest thrown in to soften the ideological impurities necessary to form working governments and markets. To the extent it leads to embracing American style leftism, it’s like devout religion leading to violence; sure, it happens, but thats not the point nor the logical conclusion, just proof that anything at all can be bastardized, abused or perverted.
I think to some degree the idea of Secular Humanism has actually given rise to more people like myself who trend towards individual liberty and against government involvement. However, it has also given rise to those on the left believing that they should be able to do whatever they want and not need to work in jobs they hate. Otherwise that they can spontaneously alter their gender on the fly…
“Leftists in the US are like underpants gnomes in South Park: Step One; destroy everything that exists, Step Two;????, Step Three; bask in the glory of utopia.” – This just beared repeating.
“They don’t have the technology necessary to provide a 21st-century education for the children, but they’re fully loaded.”
The generations that gave us steam power, thermodynamics, electricity and lighting, and gasoline engines didn’t have computers. Quantum mechanics and general relativity were laid out before iPhones and television.
I’m not convinced that a tech-heavy education is the way to go .. too easy to turn the job of teaching over to YouTube and focusing on the standardized testing, rather than getting students to actually think.
But what do I know? I’m not a politician who knows what’s best for everyone.
He presents a rather weak and obvious strawman/ false dichotomy argument: What does allowing people to carry guns have to do with school funding?
I think I’ll just leave that there…because I truely cannot imagine a coherent argument that armed people and school funding are linked. I’m fairly sure that such arguments are the desperate reflex of an ill-informed and thoroughly closed minded person, and are roughly the adult equivalent of a toddler arguing against a nap by screaming ‘NO!’ repeatedly, and probably ought to carry about the same weight and garner about as much consideration: If that is the prevailing argument against allowing school staff to carry weapons, there is no rational argument against allowing school staff to carry weapons, and in a saner world, we could just stop right there and have won the day.
“Think about it. Is that what we really want to be?” – Sen. Vincent Hughes, D-Philadelphia ”
In a word YES.
Every school should be armed to the teeth.
Shit, start a program where the community volunteers to provide security for the schools.
“…start a program where the community volunteers to provide security for the schools.”
I’m baffled an actual common-sense idea like that hasn’t been explored. Communities usually have retired people living there that would love to be there if the shit goes down.
Interview them, Screen them, train them, and schedule them a few days a week each and go from there…
Oddly, I have yet to hear of a massacre at armed-up high. It’s almost as if guns aren’t the problem. Nor good people with guns. Maybe it’s aliens. Or thugs.
I’ll believe Senator Yuuuge is sincere when he’s for declaring his Phili schools “Thug free zones”, and enforcing it. (How’s he gonna do that – get quoted?)
Is this what we want our schools to be – armed against the thugs? Sadly, no arms n no thugs is not an option the thugs have left us. Or Senator “thugs are O K in schools.” One suspects Senator “No guns for you.” really objects to the folks at armed-up high dealing with reality, n doing something to get what they want.
You’re supposed to quietly let your kids die. The thugs are happier that way.
One who attempts to accurately observe reality, and employ ones reason and intellect to understanding it as it actually is, so that they may act in a effective manner in response to reality often enough finds it difficult to understand that there are a great many people who, upon being confronted by and uncomfortable reality, set out to use their intellect and reason to convince themselves and others that reality isn’t reality. This is how bias is formed.
Of course, once reality is rejected, all actions are necessarily arbitrary, and thus extraordinarily unlikely to result in beneficial effects. This is how dissonance is formed.
However, few people weak and comfortable enough to have rejected reality (believe me, people living closer to the bone lack the luxury of rejecting reality and surviving) in the first place are altogether unlikely to identify their initial failing, admit to it, and adequately rectify the situation. However, the continued failures of their solutions to effectively address the problems they can’t ignore eventually begins to break down their carefully constructed blinds of bias and the dissonance becomes to strong. Being unable to admit to the initial failing, they then must blame something or someone for the failure of thier ideas. You see, since they can’t admit to being wrong about reality in the first place, the only self serving method of insulating their bias from their failure is to assign the failure to malignant ‘others’, who must be actively undermining their solutions, thus producing the failure of thier predictions and solutions. Since in thier minds their solutions should lead to utopia, these others are evil actors, who must be suppressed, marginalized or eliminated. The fact that this ‘logical’ conclusion also serves to ameliorate the psychic pain they experience whenever reality intrudes surely plays a role.
In the end, this pattern results in a form of dysfunctional and delusional insanity, which requires treatment, since there is no known way to logically argue someone back to sanity.
They say the first step is admitting you have a problem. When we as a society finally admit that American style leftism is less a legitimate school of political thought and more a form of stylized delusional insanity, we can begin to effectively address it for what it is, with appropriate treatment. Of course the first consideration in dealing with an insane person is to ensure they cause no harm to themselves or others until they regain sanity. Perhaps it is time to classify these leftist stylized delusions as a mental illness, and remove those suffering from it from possition of power and authority until they demonstrate and accurate and enduring commitment to perceiving reality and can again fully rejoin society.
Sure and then gays and Jews, right? You’re treading into hypocritical territory when you argue “we” (whoever that is) should decide who is deemed insane and removed from positions of influence. Don’t fall into the same trap of reasoning why you should be able to be the tyrant.
Except that’s absolutely not at all what he’s arguing and, as much as you’d obviously like to think so, there is absolutely no logical “argument” to connect what you’re erroneously inferring from his statement and what he posted.
No, no there isn’t.
“…American style leftism is less a legitimate school of political thought and more a form of stylized delusional insanity…”
Nice. Succinct and on-point. I’m not for institutionally declaring people insane w/ exclusion and censure — who decides?
Personally, however, I’m just fine with not dealing with insane people.
Replace the Gun-Free zone w/ the Free-Gun zone.
Ok. I don’t see the connection of armed people to their budget? How does allowing parents and teachers to carry their own firearms change the lack of tools used to educate the kids? This is like comparing Apple’s to ostrich feathers……. one has no connection to the other.
Because Democrats don’t understand the difference between a right, a mandate and an entitlement. To them, if a teacher has the right to be armed, then all teachers will be required to be armed whether they want to or not and obviously the school district will have to supply their firearms. And of course, having armed staff who are competent in using – and knowing when not to use – their firearms will lead to armed nutburgers coming in and shooting up the school because guns are bad.
Just like their ideas on healthcare. If we have a right to seek health insurance (a right to purchase a service – something we’ve never been restricted from) then obviously everyone must be required to purchase it, and it must be provided through the government. And, of course, having insurance with a premium you can’t afford and a deductible that would bankrupt you means you suddenly have adequate healthcare.
Most of the people “covered” by Obamacare are covered by Medicaid. Medicaid does not benefit people’s health. It makes them feel good and helps their pocket books. I’d rather just have a check. I could probably do more for my health with a check than I could with Medicaid.
Most of the people who would lose their “insurance” if Obamacare is undone, don’t have insurance. They have Medicaid, which isn’t insurance.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General (Kathleen Kane, D) is doing time for corruption. The Philadelphia District Attorney (Seth Williams, D) is doing time for corruption. Sen. Vincent Hughes (Philadelphia, D) is a moron.
Think about it. Is that what we really want Democrats to be?
Prisoners? Yes Ralph, that is very much what we wish them to be.
My fantasy fulfilled would involve aggressive, frequent and novel prosecutions of leftists under everything from the 64 civil rights act to the treason, sedition and subversive activities act.
McCarthy didn’t go anywhere near far enough, and the proof is all around us!
Truly scary thing is, we now know that McCarthy was absolutely fucking right with the recent declassification of the Verona cables. He was, in point of fact, more right than he could have ever realized, much to our detriment.
You honestly don’t even need to be novel to convict most of these people.
Take Hilary as an example. She clearly violated the records act by destroying government records. That’s a felony with a max 3 year sentence. She destroyed 30,000 pages of emails. Let’s assume that one page equals one email. A maximum sentence on each count served consecutively would be a sentence of 90,000 years.
Obama’s library has stolen government records. More records act violations.
Public education in America has its problems. In Pennsylvania it was a republican governor who gutted funding for public schools while giving tax breaks and other incentives to energy companies.
Even though there is very little — if any — correlation between public funding and educational outcomes. Especially given the fact that countries who spend less than half of what we do, per-student and per-capita, are way ahead of us practically across the board.
No. It actually has very little, if anything at all, to do with funding. It is not now, has never been, and shall never be for the foreseeable future a funding problem. It’s actually a problem of the near inability to actually fire a bad teacher unless they get caught fucking their students (and sometimes not even then) and make way for actually competent educators, a top-down federal curriculum that panders only to the lowest common denominator and deliberately hamstrings good students which comes from a demonstrably and thoroughly clueless goobermint department that should never have existed in the first place, and an increasing lack of parental participation to the point of blaming the sk00l if Junior doesn’t do their homework but instead of plays vidya games all night and gets a bad grade because of it.
THAT’S IT.
Yep.
It’s quite interesting how different PA is from its hoplophobic neighbor, New Jersey.
Everyone’s got cool logos for their screen name. I need a brand…maybe a gun tattoo on my forehead.
I get what you’re going for, but it’s a swing and a miss. With only low powered perception at the ready, you might not want to waste it on navel gazing.
Do it as utah + constitunal carry !!
“constitunal carry”??
What is that? Singing the Schoolhouse Rock song about how a bill becomes a law — while packing?
Maybe the Pennsylvania law should allow adult students to carry, as well. An 18 year old young woman who had just graduated the week before was gunned down in a road rage incident in Chester County, Pennsylvania. The shooter was a 28 year man upset about the outcome of the merging from two lanes into one he experienced with the victim.
The shooter used a legally purchased .40 semi-auto handgun. Turns out, sometimes road rage does lead to gunplay; sometimes there is blood in the streets.
“…The shooter used a legally purchased”
So what? What he did with it was illegal so why don’t we focus on that part of what happened.
” Think about it. Is that what we really want to be?”
What, safe? Yes!
The creepy guy peeking through the chain link fence is packing…or maybe he’s just happy to be there…
“They don’t have the technology necessary to provide a 21st-century education for the children…”
The only technology needed to provide a good education is books, paper and pencils–assuming, of course, you have competent, caring teachers and involved parents.
How would disarming the teachers affect any of the above?
I agree! You don’t need IPADs to teach children. Technology is only as useful as the teacher can make it. Funds would be better invested in better teachers than wasting them in entertaining and ultimately unnecessary classroom gadgets.
Yes that is exactly what we want.
Lets talk about this from the Sandy Hook perspective.
First the shooter had mental health issues. Negotiation and appealing to reason would not help in this situation
If i remember the details correctly one of the Principles and guidance counsels died while trying to stop the shooter from getting in.
4 teachers died, reports indicating all of them were trying to shield students with there bodies from the shooter.
If just a few of these 6 brave women where armed it is very likely the death toll would have been lower than 26. in a just and perfect world it would be just one, the shooter himself.
A List of the victims of Sandy Hook
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/sandy-hook-elementary-school-shooting-victims-gallery-1.1221180?pmSlide=1.1225284
Dumb sh!t response from senator Vincent Hughes. Not surprised this is the best this Philadelphia district has to offer to represent them. The state isn’t funding the school workers guns. The state is “allowing” the school employees to ability to defend themselves against the modern attacker. A ridiculous notion protected by rights that shouldn’t have even been able to be restricted in the first place. The state isn’t funding their firearms. The employees would be able to bring their own. Therefore, his comparison between their ability to defend themselves and their crappy education is incommensurable. Furthermore this is a net improvement. They had crappy security and a crappy education. At least one of them is being addressed. Lastly, classroom technology and gadgets are not needed to teach children. Funding technological improvements does not necessarily equate to a better educated classroom.
TTAG should start a “MENTALLY RETARDED ANTI-GUN STATEMENT OF THE DAY.”
Our little girl attends a Catholic school, I would not be surprised at all if the principal and vice principal have “something” in their desks if the situation arises.
I’m good with that.
D-Philadelphia – That says it all right there. The Philthy schools are some of the worst in the country. The city is a festering cesspool run by… wait for it… Democrats! And all they do is bitch and moan that the rest of the state doesn’t give them more money to fund the schools. Maybe if they had a system worth a damn then they could fund them. The city and the school district are broke. Too many people on government assistance and don’t pay taxes… no wonder the city is in the shitter, am I right?
For the most part, the rest of PA schools are in great shape and some of the best anywhere.
I would like to see every school employee armed, and every school displaying a sign like the one in this article.
At least they won’t be committing any false flags attacks at that school system. Soft targets are preferred for that..