The "My State Government is worse than your states" thread

PMeg819

In Arizona we have the following:

1. The state's drivers licenses are not compliant with federal guidelines that are required for travel, so shortly you won't be able to travel via plane using them. You have to have a passport or other document. A bill to rectify the issue failed.

2. The governor's budget stripped a huge chunk of money away from education. A new, $5 million prison to be run by a private corrections company was approved. Guess if you aren't going to educate the kids, you've got to make sure you can incarcerate them.

3. We passed more abortion restrictions.

4. The governor is requiring a review of school cirriculum because Common Core is the devil.

5. Points 2 & 3 area already going to cost the state money in lawsuits. There was already a court case that said the state had to pay more money towards education, but the state is ignoring it I guess.

6. We were the ones that had the (failed) bill that banned transgender people the right to use the bathroom of their choosing. So a MtF individual was not able to use the women's restroom.

There is more. But these people are so fucking backwards they shit out of their mouth and talk with their ass.

0Face

*thanks jeebus I live in IA*  I mean, one would think we were more "backwards" but clearly we're more progressive than most.

Heffalump

PMeg819 said:

4. The governor is requiring a review of school curriculum because Common Core is the devil.

SITB

NC dumped the Common Core because...well, it wasn't really clear why.  Because Obama, I think.  Except they don't have anything to replace it.  And they can't agree if they want to start over at square one, or just tweak the Common Core.  So we're in this weird limbo now.

GBCK

I think we may win long term with the effing rape insurance.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/13/michigans-abortion-rider-_n_4958517.html

VarunaTT

Well this is what my state legislature got up to today:

"2. A recipient of supplemental nutrition assistance program benefits shall not use
such benefits to purchase cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood, or steak."

B/c fuck poor people, that's why.

mrsconn23

Heffalump said:

PMeg819 said:

4. The governor is requiring a review of school curriculum because Common Core is the devil.

SITB

NC dumped the Common Core because...well, it wasn't really clear why.  Because Obama, I think.  Except they don't have anything to replace it.  And they can't agree if they want to start over at square one, or just tweak the Common Core.  So we're in this weird limbo now.

Same with IN.  And I think that's why our standardized testing is a cluster.

IN just passed a law yesterday that allows businesses to refuse service for 'religious' reasons.  It should be called, "Oh noes, teh gays can get gay married now because the supreme court said so, how can we still fuck them over."

There's a bullshit abortion bill out there.

And we still can't buy alcohol from the store on Sunday.

Heffalump

VarunaTT said:

Well this is what my state legislature got up to today:

"2. A recipient of supplemental nutrition assistance program benefits shall not use
such benefits to purchase cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood, or steak."

B/c fuck poor people, that's why.

It's good to know that not being poor means you can tell other people what to do.  Fuck you, poor person, no steak for you. 

So now you can't buy steak, but you can still buy ice cream?  So it's not about health or nutrition, then, it's about punishing people for being poor.

Let's just kill two birds with one stone and start feeding the poor to the other poor.  Soylent green is people, yo. 

AuntFlo

Ohio is one clusterfuck of a dissappointment, that's for sure.

mrsconn23

VarunaTT said:

Well this is what my state legislature got up to today:

"2. A recipient of supplemental nutrition assistance program benefits shall not use
such benefits to purchase cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood, or steak."

B/c fuck poor people, that's why.

Fucking steak?  Really?! 

I will say that I think it's ridiculous that the gas station by my IL's has HUGE SIGNS that says you can get your Monster and shit using your EBT, but there has to be better things to be legislated.

PMeg819

My favorite was the drug testing. And once they put that in effect, they found that people getting EBT benefits weren't using drugs. Surprise, surprise mother fuckers!

I do love that our state passed a medical marijuana bill. Apparently, it's going pretty good and growing like crazy.

So to refresh- pot is okay for "sick" people, abortions are bad, kids should be stupid, and we need more prisons. Arizona voters turn out- but its only the old people. Then everyone crows about how horrible our government is.

VarunaTT

The other favorite is that people are trading their EBT cards for drugs.  Nope, still less than 2% fraud in food stamps use.

If they were so interested in stomping out fraud that costs us money, they could go after Wall Street.

hmonkey

i remember when florida required ebt recipients to take drug tests. they had to PAY for the drug tests, too; they would be reimbursed for the tests if the test was negative.

guess how many tests were negative? almost all of them except about a hundred. so the taxpayers paid for about $45K of degrading, dehumanizing tests with almost nothing to show for it.

i think utah and tennessee had similar results when they did the same thing.

hmonkey

btw -- here in illinois?  4 out of the last 7 governors went to prison.  

KatWAG

hmonkey said:

btw -- here in illinois?  4 out of the last 7 governors went to prison.  

Yup, we like to sell Senate seats. And have ex- Governor wives show up on reality TV with Heidi and Spencer.

IL state finances are so bad that we cant pay for our pensions or any other government services.

MesmrEwe

Here we've just got a massive surplus and the state's major employers are laying off people left and right... and the Trust Fund Governor wants to increase gas taxes, increase the cost of going to State Parks, increase taxes on everyone because if you're poor you can afford to pay more anyway because kids in, yada yada yada...  But anyway...

<soap box> Having had to deal with a kid "learning" the whole Common Core Curriculum... IMO - throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to that crap!  I don't care what moronic political party got paid to implement the stuff, and/or continue it, it's got to go!  Kids don't learn the fundamentals which sets them up for failure in the long term when it gets to the higher levels especially in Math.  A fourth grader doesn't need to learn advanced Algebra when they can't even tell you off the top of their head what 3x6 is, let alone 3+6 because "speed work" is eliminated entirely, or long division and decimals when they haven't mastered straight division.  It's a "one size fits no one" approach to learning instead of being able to adjust to the students both gifted and slower with some years just being complete reviews of the previous year which is its own setup for failure.  So on that one - it should be reviewed and tossed out.  Education before Common Core was broke, but CC wasn't the solution... Same goes for throwing out the standardized tests that tell everyone nothing about a student nor their performance nor knowledge, skills, and abilities other than their ability to take a standardized test.  But alas, that type of stuff is why I got out of education before I graduated college (after doing curriculum work for several teachers as a consultant) because let the poor teachers teach, and, equip them with the resources they need to teach THEIR students the best, which WILL vary from district to district and class to class (i.e. a science teacher needs different resources than an English teacher than a Special Education teacher... and you can't base performance on a standardized test when one teacher has the Advanced kids and another has the heavily labeled kids...)

Heffalump

hmonkey said:

btw -- here in illinois?  4 out of the last 7 governors went to prison.  

Our mayor went to federal prison for taking bribes.  But it was like $60k.  Dude, if you're going to risk your freedom and your political career, don't half-ass it.

VarunaTT

Common core is not the devil.

First off, it doesn't set up fundamentals the way WE learned them.  And that is 100% okay.  A new way of doing math has been figured out and it's proving to be faster in the long run, with more fundamental understanding of the structure of mathematics, rather than rote memorization. 

Secondly, the complaints I see about Common Core doesn't come from teachers, it comes from parents.  I'm really truly sorry that the job of educating your kid has become a specialization, b/c it must be very scary and difficult to not know how to do something to help your kid.  Doesn't mean Common Core is the devil.

Finally, if people gave this much crap about education in the first damn place?  Maybe our students wouldn't be falling behind in every single measurement of education as compared to other countries.

I'm good with them trying something else.I can't find the column right now, but there was a really great article about this not to long ago that basically said Common Core isn't the devil, but the answer is really to have smaller classrooms that allow teachers to match their teaching styles to a kids learning style.  

Education is allowed to improve and the effin' sky won't fall down.

Heffalump

VarunaTT said:

First off, it doesn't set up fundamentals the way WE learned them.  And that is 100% okay.  A new way of doing math has been figured out and it's proving to be faster in the long run, with more fundamental understanding of the structure of mathematics, rather than rote memorization. 

Related:  I mentioned a few weeks ago that we had a student visiting.  She was in my office briefly, and asked about what I did during a typical workday.  (I left out the part about TK.)  When I explained about pricing and profit margins and everything, she said, "So is it basically, like, story problems?"  I told her once you're out of school, all your math is story problems. 

So I like that about CC.  I like that it focuses on practical skills and how to solve problems, as opposed to rote memorization.  DD is doing stuff with 10-groups right now, which I never did as a kid, and she can do more advanced math than I could at her age.

thejucheidea

I live in Tennessee. This place is a shithole, for real. Nashville's pretty good, but once you get out of Davidson county, it's like 'what the fuck is this place and why is it so goddamn backwards'.

baconsmom

Co has legal pot, gay marriage, a budget surplus from the pot that we'll get back starting next year. And mountains. 

mrsconn23

baconsmom said:

Co has legal pot, gay marriage, a budget surplus from the pot that we'll get back starting next year. And mountains.