Armed Polite Society

I'm only being half sarcastic.  Excessive credit taking aside, teachers and other school staff have a relatively small impact on the performance of their students.  They can't significantly impact the amount of support and emphasis on education that happens at home, and without that support they are just not capable of moving the needle on the vast majority of kids.  In areas with a culture that values education, teachers will perform well.  In an area with a culture that does not value education, teachers will perform poorly.

I agree with you there, actually.  Then I'd like them to explain why the taxpayers should spend $50,000,000,000 on something that has a relatively small impact on their students.   

I would really like to see some real journalist ask the head of the Teacher's Union how the hell they justify asking for anything more given their current performance.  Let them justify the pathetic education they are providing.

No, no, no, that's not how any of this works.  If students do well, it's all because how awesome teachers are.  If students do poorly, teachers just can't help it because parents suck.

I'm only being half sarcastic.  Excessive credit taking aside, teachers and other school staff have a relatively small impact on the performance of their students.  They can't significantly impact the amount of support and emphasis on education that happens at home, and without that support they are just not capable of moving the needle on the vast majority of kids.  In areas with a culture that values education, teachers will perform well.  In an area with a culture that does not value education, teachers will perform poorly.

It's pretty similar to police, actually.  In areas with cultures that are self-governing and respect the law, Barney Fife can control a town with minimal effort and few issues.  In other areas ...

In both cases, the ones doing well will hold out their success as a reason to give them more money, and the ones doing poorly will blame their failures on lack of money.

Trump’s Finger Hovers Over ‘Send’ Button As He Ponders Whether Sick Burn Worth Another $10,000
https://babylonbee.com/news/trumps-finger-hovers-over-send-button-as-he-ponders-whether-sick-burn-worth-another-10000

One of the things I really like about this show is how it manages to be entertaining, but also shines a stark light on just how *expletive deleted*it upon the people that make our food really are.  I can't imagine the US is much better.

I'm only a half assed farmer, but have firsthand knowledge between farming in Idaho and farming in Calif (via the guy my parents leased to). On the fed level, it's really not that bad. Yet. I've dealt with USDA/NRCS in Idaho and they have been super friendly and helpful. Deep state progressives certainly want to change that, especially at the White House level and agencies like the EPA. We've all seen the EPA lawsuits of six figures per day against farming families because rain created a pond/watershed/wetland and suddenly it became a "federal waterway".

California was getting ridiculous before I moved. One of the reasons my parents' renter paid so much per acre to rent their land and grow corn and wheat, besides feeding his cows (he owned a big dairy) was that it was the only way he could keep from going broke removing manure from his dairy. CA declared it a hazardous material, so if you hauled it off, it had to go to Nevada and it cost a fortune to both transport and dump it. There was still a loophole that if you spread it on your land as fertilizer, that was okay. So dairy guys ended up leasing land more to have a place for their manure than to grow crops.

Here in Idaho, my dealings with the state have pretty much boiled down to, "What are you even calling us for? Do whatever you want. What do we care?". That's kind of been changing though, even in just the 5.5 years I've been here, because of the quickly increasing population.

I did a land split last year that took most of the year, and almost every time I went to the county building for paperwork I saw a new sign on the wall about a new regulation. Stuff like "Engineered drawings now required for agricultural outbuildings" (you used to be able to just put up the building as long as it was a barn or for equipment storage or whatever) or "permits now required for woodstoves".

Never watched them but do remember them being on TV.
Sid & Marty Croft, Outer Limits (orig.), Twilight Zone (orig.), Lost in Space (orig.), Have Gun Will Travel, etc.

Regular TV shows I watched included the above (other than the Crofts, which IIRC came along when I was older) plus Mr. Roberts, COMBAT!, Bonanza, Maverick (orig), McHale's Navy, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, Science Fiction Theater, Johnny Yuma, Flash Gordon . . .

Memorable cartoon characters included Quick Draw McGraw, Yosemite Sam, Marvin the Martian, Elmer Fudd, some Jonny Quest characters . . . all of whom had GUNZ!

Few of these would be ALLOWED on TV today, the wokesters in the corner offices of the TV stations wouldn't allow them, or would order big sections chopped out.

There was more decent stuff to watch with only 5 stations than there is today with 100+.