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Ray Schoch

Ray Schoch_2's picture
Minneapolis, MN
Commenter for
2 years 9 weeks

Recent Comments

Posted on 01/23/12 at 12:46 pm in response to Appeals Court decision on Defense of Marriage Act expected

#3 is incorrect, at least for the most part.

“Protection of the family” is *not* the only reason for marriage. The state (both literally and figuratively) has a substantial interest in the institution of marriage strictly from the standpoint of an orderly and regular system of property ownership and transfer. In that context, it matters not whether the people involved are of the same gender. What’s at issue is who owns the property of the partnership when one member dies.

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Posted on 01/23/12 at 02:11 pm in response to Legislators may spend much of the session focused on jobs -- their own

There are very good reasons why “trickle down” has fallen out of favor. It’s “class warfare” at its most obvious, as those that ‘have’ congratulate themselves that a few crumbs will “trickle down” to those that don’t ‘have.’ In many cases, of course, there is no “trickle down” effect at all. Adjusted for inflation, wages have been flat or declining in many areas for years, while corporate profits and the leeches in the financial sector have made off with millions, or in the case of a hedge...

Posted on 01/21/12 at 05:29 pm in response to Education Secretary Arne Duncan wowed by South High student enthusiasm

I loved my 30 years in a high school classroom, and the South students illustrate why. It doesn’t matter that I taught in another state. High school students in thousands of high schools across the country have ample supplies of energy, enthusiasm, curiosity, irreverence, and other qualities that are necessary to be a fully-functioning citizen and young adult. I was pleased to see those qualities so nicely on display in this piece.

Re: student debt. The program Duncan laid out isn’t...

Posted on 01/20/12 at 12:29 pm in response to The very dramatic word choices of Newt Gingrich

Can you spell d-e-m-a-g-o-g-u-e?

As soon as Mr. Gingrich leads the charge to remove Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Fox News from the airwaves, he’ll have some credibility on this issue. He’ll be wrong – the First Amendment obviously allows, even encourages, “destructive, vicious, negative” in terms of news media. Note that amid all this verbiage, dramatic as it is, what it boils down to is “he said, she said” between an ex-wife and an ex-husband. I believe it’s factually accurate to...

Posted on 01/19/12 at 12:33 pm in response to All heck breaking loose in Republican race

So the Republican presidential field now consists of a genuine plutocrat who has hidden numerous millions in the jack-of-all-hiding-places, the Cayman Islands, a serial adulterer convicted by his fellow House members of ethics violations, a died-in-the-wool reactionary who basically wants to return to the Articles of Confederation as a governing structure, and a Catholic bigot.

It’s really kind of mind-boggling, not only that these four people expect to be taken seriously as potential...

Posted on 01/19/12 at 01:43 pm in response to U of M study: Men spend more (and save less) when women are scarce

Finally!! Something about which I’m in agreement with Mr. Tester.

Fortunately, this all becomes irrelevant when you reach my age and circumstance.

Posted on 01/19/12 at 12:43 pm in response to Met Council's Susan Haigh makes pitch for transit funding

I’ll never be able to afford to live in the area the proposed SW line would serve, but I still think it’s a good idea. The more people we can get out of cars for the daily commute, the better off we’ll be, and if there really are more than 200,000 people moving back and forth along that corridor every day, LRT is an excellent way to serve them, and far better than continuing to sink money into the fiscal black hole of highway construction and, especially, maintenance.

Would that we...

Posted on 01/19/12 at 02:25 pm in response to Irondale's new college-in-high-school program to be on display at town hall with Arne Duncan

A caveat I keep waiting to see in articles about this sort of thing is that college is now big business, and many institutions now operate on something far closer to a corporate model than an academic one. For-profit colleges, of course *are* following a corporate model, and their primary goal is to make money, not necessarily to prepare the next generation for citizenship and/or leadership. Many a non-profit college president spends the vast majority of his time fund-raising and...

Posted on 01/18/12 at 06:01 pm in response to What if Ron Paul ran as a third party candidate?

For what very, very little it’s worth, I agree, Eric. I don’t expect Paul to run, nor would I expect him to pick up nearly 20 percent of the vote if he *did* run.

On the other hand, given the softness of Obama’s support (lots of people unhappy with him, but no alternative on the horizon), the prospect of Paul running in November does provide a certain schadenfreude at the prospect of Ron Paul playing an approximation of the Ralph Nader role in 2000. Paul as a 3rd party candidate would...

Posted on 01/18/12 at 09:50 am in response to Reaction to bonding goodies

Pat Berg’s internet experience is similar to mine.

In Minneapolis.

I can’t help but wonder what Reverend Schensted is paying for his “overkill” in Lakefield.