Political Digression Thread -- Save UP! Move the politically focused stuff here

[southslider]

Just demilitarizing the police would be a key reform. Weapons not even allowed in warfare shouldn't be used on citizens. 

[videtur quam contuor]

I keep reading this thing about "just one bad apple..." or "a few bad apples..." in many of the stories we all see regarding police failures. The phrase makes me say aloud that the maxim is "one bad apple ruins the bunch (or barrel)". The metaphor is twisted to other uses as an excuse. The metaphor of "one bad apple ruins the bunch" clearly means one must have NO bad apples. One apple, by the time it has visibly degenerated, will have infected all the apples. One bad apple will lead anyone to assume all the apples are bad. That is the meaning, as everyone should know. Cull the apples before they are in the barrel. 

One bad officer does not exonerate all others, he implicates others by reputation.

Edited June 10, 2020 by tarhoosier

[elrodvt]

I think the de-fund idea is a good one although a really poor way to put it. The militarization is nuts. Among a 100 other things. The UK seems to get along fine without cops shooting people or even being armed in normal duty. It's a tough road though and to think it'll be fixed in one fell swoop is naive. First we need a blue Congress and executive branch. Not sure how the Supremes gets more balanced though...

Edited June 10, 2020 by elrodvt

[elrodvt]

On 8/12/2017 at 4:41 PM, Dale said:

As a side benefit, it keeps the 17 white supremacists in the US in the news and relevant.

Does anyone know how to remove quotes like above from the post? This was in my buffer somehow and accidently posted. It does .... Well, never mind.

Anyhow, This is a good article if you have 5 minutes: https://thecorrespondent.com/521/democracy-isnt-working-five-ideas-that-are-already-helping-to-fix-the-problem/44315364401-2444bdc5

Edited June 10, 2020 by elrodvt

[navigator319]

9 hours ago, elrodvt said:

I think the de-fund idea is a good one although a really poor way to put it. The militarization is nuts. Among a 100 other things. The UK seems to get along fine without cops shooting people or even being armed in normal duty. It's a tough road though and to think it'll be fixed in one fell swoop is naive. First we need a blue Congress and executive branch. Not sure how the Supremes gets more balanced though...

There was a great piece in one of the outlets yesterday about Camden, NJ as a model for 'defund'.  It is an absolute wrong way to promote it and discuss it.  Words matter.

Anyway Camden in 2013 scrapped the whole police department.  Fired everyone and started from scratch with a whole new model.  Hired back 100 of the folks from the original with a total force of 4-500.  They results seem to be pretty amazing.

[elrodvt]

15 minutes ago, navigator319 said:

There was a great piece in one of the outlets yesterday about Camden, NJ as a model for 'defund'.  It is an absolute wrong way to promote it and discuss it.  Words matter.

Anyway Camden in 2013 scrapped the whole police department.  Fired everyone and started from scratch with a whole new model.  Hired back 100 of the folks from the original with a total force of 4-500.  They results seem to be pretty amazing.

I read this yesterday perhaps that's the one you read. It was good.

https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/06/08/872416644/former-chief-of-reformed-camden-n-j-force-police-need-consent-of-the-people

[navigator319]

Wasn't the NPR one. Think was the CNN.  Bit more detail here.  There are several other more in depth article out their as well.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/disband-police-camden-new-jersey-trnd/index.html

[gman430]

Donald Trump is an American hero.  

[kermit]

9 hours ago, gman430 said:

Donald Trump is an American hero.  

Don’t leave us hanging, tell us why.

[ertley]

There were multiple issues discussed in the VICE report on Charlotte and its racial disparities, and I certainly don't have answers or even suggestions for all of them, but I do for one: School Funding. The fundamental problem with equity in education, and the equitable funding of schools in this country--whence so much of self-segregation in cities and towns comes--is that we fund schools by property taxes. We have to find another way. End school funding from property tax revenue, and you kill the root of so many of the problems they talk about here, and that we all talk about.

Logically, in a 'meta' sense, why SHOULD schools be funded by property taxes--at least residential ones? I know the basic argument is that education serves the greater good and is a basis for economic growth, thus residential property taxes for schools, but clearly we don't really believe, or truly operate, under that premise, or our schools would all be equally funded. A house's value and thus its property tax revenue shouldn't translate to more school funding for the children from those houses or neighborhoods. It's fundamentally not right, if you believe in public education. Furthermore, because so many residences don't have school aged children, you have a fundamental built in resistance to property taxes among much of the population that's never going to change, and we're going to be fighting these funding battles for generations to come, with new "innovations" tried and tried again.  If people really care about this, and want true, universal, equitable, quality education, we have to fund schools from taxation sources other than residential property taxes.

My personal opinion--and I know this would meet with hella resistance, but I truly believe it's the right answer, even if it never will be realized--is that the federal government needs to provide the absolute majority of FUNDING for schools; I realize actual increased control of curriculum and standards will invite implacable furor. The reason we're in this morass is precisely because states, counties and municipalities want to exert control over education, so they've demanded the control that comes with their own funding. Especially in this current climate, I bet you can make a strong argument that a lot of this desire for local control--and thus a f----d up funding mechanism--is rooted in racism and segregationist motivations. Although I'm in favor of better, stronger national standards (because I personally think too many of them are deficient or retrograde in their approach), to make this work I'd be willing to let communities and states still have control over things like curriculum and standards, to get this done, because just shifting the funding to the federal level will alone have a transformative effect.  

Just think for a second of what Charlotte and every other city would look like if schools were funded by the federal government, on a per capita child basis. The argument that Puckett is making, which has some merits (although he's missing the bigger picture), would have to be addressed: Administrators would have to focus on improving schools' instruction, and making education fit the needs of actual students, and not by shifting students around to schools to improve testing averages. States and municipalities wouldn't have to bother themselves with school taxation issues, and all the distractions and problems they bring, and could focus on actual education issues. More importantly, it would make affluent parents, often those with political might and will, to see how well (or not) schools are funded, and get funding improved if need be, instead of now, being able to ignore lack of funding in schools outside your own district.

We're seeing racial lines already begin to blur in cities, and I think per capita child federal funding would accelerate it, and could also (potentially) encourage more neighborhood schools. People certainly wouldn't automatically, reflexively associate richer neighborhoods with having richer (i.e. better) schools, because they wouldn't be. Neighborhoods with fewer school aged children would have less overall funding, and neighborhoods with more school aged children--regardless of race--would have more, with city officials actually having to work harder to get more younger families to move into single family, established neighborhoods, to increase school funding. That right there is a major paradigm shift.

Universal equitable federal funding on a per capita (child) basis would disentangle so many of the problems we currently face, that we're addressing in myriad ways--and with successes--but we're pruning and pruning and pruning this bitter tree, and we just need to pull it out by the roots. 

Edited June 19, 2020 by ertley

[Madison Parkitect]

Another way to fund equally but keep it at the local level would be to just make a big pool out of everyone's property taxes and then it gets divided equally among all the schools in the district/county/whatever.

[southslider]

16 hours ago, kermit said:

Don’t leave us hanging, tell us why.

Just wait for the slogans on signs in Tulsa, or even Jacksonville. If MAGA or KAG now seem sparse, we just know all this abundant greatness now goes without saying.

[gman430]

22 hours ago, kermit said:

Don’t leave us hanging, tell us why.

Because he likes our law enforcement.  It’s a beautiful day for a MAGA rally.  

Edited June 20, 2020 by gman430

[kermit]

19 minutes ago, gman430 said:

Because he likes our law enforcement. 

Are you sure about that?

 

[TCLT]

Packed arena tonight [emoji1787][emoji1787][emoji1787]

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/JCooperTV/status/1274478607289761793

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/KTULNews/status/1274496317939757057

 

Barely pushing half full.

 

Spectrum at reduced capacity probably would’ve been more than enough.

[Madison Parkitect]

1 hour ago, TCLT said:

Packed arena tonight

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/JCooperTV/status/1274478607289761793

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/KTULNews/status/1274496317939757057

 

Barely pushing half full.

 

Spectrum at reduced capacity probably would’ve been more than enough.

Wasn't his campaign manager bragging about some absurdly high number of ticket requests they got?

[TCLT]

Wasn't his campaign manager bragging about some absurdly high number of ticket requests they got?

Indeed. Bragging about expecting 100,000 people. The arena has a 19,000 person capacity. Will be interesting to see final attendance number (if they even release it), but I'd be surprised if it was much higher than 10,000. They cancelled the outdoor speech and dismantled the overflow area outside BOK Center because no one was there.

 

Edit: I was off by an order of magnitude.

https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1272521253136498690

[Madison Parkitect]

2 hours ago, TCLT said:

Indeed. Bragging about expecting 100,000 people. The arena has a 19,000 person capacity. Will be interesting to see final attendance number (if they even release it), but I'd be surprised if it was much higher than 10,000. They cancelled the outdoor speech and dismantled the overflow area outside BOK Center because no one was there.

 

Edit: I was off by an order of magnitude.

https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1272521253136498690

Haha so apparently all the requests came from TikTok teens and KPop fans as a prank and Trump's campaign thought they were real.

[eastsider]

13 hours ago, kermit said:

Are you sure about that?

 

See the problem here is that you are an informed person, meanwhile the MAGA's believe  everything dear leader tells them. 

[TCLT]

12 hours ago, TCLT said:

Will be interesting to see final attendance number

Looks like they didn't even fill 1/3 of the arena. Just under 6200 in attendance. 

[kermit]

Speaking of car culture thwarting democracy:

In today’s Kentucky primary (which featured a contentious senate race) only one polling site was open in Louisville (for more than 760,000 people and the majority of the state’s minority population). Reports indicated that the polling center was big enough that lines to vote were not a major problem. However, it was more than an hour wait to park before going inside to vote.

Voter suppression comes in many forms, one of them is a parking space.

Edited June 24, 2020 by kermit

[Madison Parkitect]

25 minutes ago, kermit said:

Speaking of car culture thwarting democracy:

In today’s Kentucky primary (which featured a contentious senate race) only one polling site was open in Louisville (for more than 760,000 people and the majority of the state’s minority population). Reports indicated that the polling center was big enough that lines to vote were not a major problem. However, it was more than an hour wait to park before going inside to vote.

Voter suppression comes in many forms, one of them is a parking space.

That's the most blatant, clearest example of voter suppression I've ever seen.

[Matthew.Brendan]

Ho hum, another day in America 2020. Can't have any legitimate challenges to Mitch.

[kermit]

Abolish the Suburbs!

 

[I don't really want to abolish the suburbs, but we really do need subsidies for suburban living end and for suburban residents to pay the full environmental, infrastructural and social costs that they impose upon the rest of us]

and No, Biden never said he wanted to abolish the suburbs either.

[Madison Parkitect]

It's not surprising at all but it's entertaining to see the GOP bend over backwards to make Biden look far-left when he's probably one of the most right-leaning Democrats in that party today.