... gladiator pit?
First off, no, this isn't combat and I don't suffer from that delusion...
Secondly, I'm talking about crazy vs. crazy. I want QANON nuts, antivax moms, liberals that accuse everyone they don't like of being a Russian bot, etc.
Finally.... I'm having a hard time moving past you calling this a gladiator pit, and implying that I'm a gladiator.... Actually, what's your Twitter handle. You sound like someone I should follow.
There's nothing wrong with a school district operating different types of schools, such as VT schools...
Not one piece of my critique was about "educational styles or content", it was entirely based on private entities siphoning off public funding for schools that are allowed to discriminate, not serve as a public resource, and disregard many, if not most, of the laws protecting students and public schools.
You're conflating your experience with a VT to Charter Schools, and it's not the same. Plenty of districts run specialized schools, for both blue collar and white collar track students.
I am sure there are plenty of white papers that deal with Charter School reform, and they would have much better ideas than I do on the subject.
Off the top of my head, they could start with:
Legally requiring transparency in admissions and a publicly accountable admissions processes. No more smoking mirrors that magically result in suspiciously high achieving, upper income, and low behavioral issues student bodies, relative to the surrounding areas.
Or better yet, abolishing them as they exist, and folding them into the public education system. If their is a parent demand for differentiated and specialized advanced public schools, have an established process to do that within a school district.
Charters are already stealing public funds, so why shouldn't they be held to the same laws and regulations that protect all students?
The thing is, I would bet you that the majority of new Charter schools, like within the last 20 years, would shut their doors if they were forced into the public school system. Because student discrimination and having a publicly funded quasi private school, that keeps out the undesirables, is the point.
They're air defense operators, just like gets deployed around Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure.
If you want to feel bad about anything, it's that this will significantly reduce the likelihood that Iran can threaten Israel with ballistic missiles.
THAAD is really good at what it does, and something tells me that the Iranians aren't going to want to waste their entire stock pile on fruitless saturation attempts. To say nothing of their concerns of killing American troops.
As in, this provides Israel even greater latitude on their quest to start a hot war with Iran, without dramatically increasing any threat to their military bases and government buildings. Well, at least not from ballistic missiles.
I don't know how your school was set up, but vocational technical high schools are often publicly run, even by the same school district that runs the local public school system.
I've never come across charter VT schools. Maybe they're common, maybe not. I just don't have any knowledge of them.
Charter Schools are generally something different, and specifically designed to cater to largely middle and upper middle class students that are heading on college track. While there are charters that do cater to low-income areas, they're still targeting kids who are on a college track, and excluding those who they feel aren't.
They're private entities that operate under a legal charter, which allows them to siphon off public education funding in lieu of charging students tuition.
And I'm not even saying there's no use case for charter schools, but I am saying is that they have been converted into a trojan horse. So whether or not they can be salvaged, would depend on legislation that prohibits, or limits, the type of behaviors I described previously.
It's also a way to get the state to pay for religious education, but most importantly, to weaken public education.
Charter schools, much lauded by plenty of mainstream Republicans and Democrats, also perform a similar function. But it's not just low income kids they keep out, it's also the difficult kids' with bad home lives, behavioral problems, and special needs. Mind you, public schools legally have to enroll every child, as they should.
But wouldn't you know, Charter Schools have an admissions process, and well, not everyone can make the cut...
This enables upper and middle class enclaves, who wouldn't otherwise spring for a private education, to achieve a somewhat similar results, but with public funds.
Others may have better, or fancier solutions, but I'm a fan VPN -> Home Network -> VNC over SSH/TLS for Linux boxes, and RDP for Windows.
Again, none of VNC or RDP ports or services are ever exposed externally, and even on the LAN, they require authentication and use secure tunnels.
Full disclosure, I haven't used RDP in a while and I don't know what version of SSL/TLS it comes with anymore.
I know their are self-hosted AnyDesk style options and maybe they're better than my approach, but I've never used them so I can't really speak on that.
Stop using TeamViewer. If you can't setup your own secure self hosted remote desktop, then at least use AnyDesk.
I'm not claiming they're perfect, or that any SaaS RD provider is good, but TeamViewer is right there with LogMeIn as the worst of a bad bunch.
One way they conduct themselves is by using the politicians they've purchased to advocate for forming public-private partnerships, in areas where they shouldn't exist, which they can then legally siphon off the resources from.
I disagree on the private sector aspect of this, but I agree on the democracy part. Although, I don't really view America as true democracy at this moment in history, but that's besides the point here.
Fusion technology is at a point in its life cycle where it needs to be a public sector project. There is no path to profitability in the near-term, that would justify private sector involvement, except as a means to extract profit from the very expensive research process of even making this technology feasible.
Not that I'm against the private sector within the nuclear power industry. I'm very excited to see what they can do with SMR technology. I'm just extremely skeptical of most private-public partnerships, especially in cases like this.
I'm not saying it can't be. I'm saying I don't believe Iran has the capabilities or stockpiles available to do so, given the other American assets in theatre, or a desire to risk killing American troops.
I suspect they're deploying THAAD because of the failures of David's Sling during the last missile attack.
Air defense systems protect specific targets, not countries. Given the THAAD's long track record under US operators, I would wager that the bases and targets that Iranian missiles hit, either lacked sufficient coverage, had poorly trained Israeli personnel, and/or were covered by David's Sling.
Of course, I could be wrong, but we won't know for many many years given how secretive Israel is on these matters.
Edit: I'm not seeing any reports of active THAAD deployments in Israel prior to this announcement, just previous deployments to Israel, including for training. But no mention if they rotated out prior to the Iranian missile strike, or that they were present for it.
I'm not saying they weren't there, but do you have a source confirms they were present during this most recent attack?