Trouble?
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@FarmerJayhawk I read an something interesting but I can’t remember where that posited if we took all the money the government spends trying to decide who qualifies for certain benefits and making sure no one accidentally gets too much, there’s be enough left over to provide services to nearly everyone.
Never heard a libertarian arguing for universal income. Is that just a you thing or common among others you know? I’ll be asking my libertarian friends.
School choice worries me a bit because of the way some people have used that phrase to support the privatization of schools but I’d love to read your paper about it and learn more about your point of view.
Thanks for sharing and let me know when that paper comes out!
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@FarmerJayhawk Another example in Texas of holding minorities down and a contributing factor in the disparity of conviction rates and sentence lengths is the prison system. I can’t speak on other states, but in Texas, most prisons are privately owned and operated. They are also among the richest and most powerful lobby groups in the state. They don’t make money by rehabbing convicted criminals so they don’t become repeat offenders, they make money by keeping those prisons as full as possible.
This lobby group is why Texas will be among the last states to decriminalize marijuana, let alone legalize it even for medicinal use. Marijuana convictions are big business in Texas, along with other misdemeanor level drug crimes because those fill these private prisons and fund a lot of law enforcement agencies in the state.
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@benshawks08 that would make sense! There’s a lot of stuff out there about monitoring costs of these programs and how they’re basically wastes of money.
I’m not sure how common it is. I think the major disagreement is about the existence of a welfare state at all. I believe we need one. As great as charities are and have been they can’t plug all the leaks in society. So my argument is that a) a welfare state is necessary and b) the current one focuses way too much on in-kind benefits instead of just giving people cash.
I’m agnostic on who actually provides education and I’m definitely not informed enough to tell everyone what system is best. Some people really like their private, religious school. Some love their neighborhood public school. Great! Lets just make the government neutral on it and let people make these choices (within certain guardrails).
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Texas Hawk 10 said:
@FarmerJayhawk Another example in Texas of holding minorities down and a contributing factor in the disparity of conviction rates and sentence lengths is the prison system. I can’t speak on other states, but in Texas, most prisons are privately owned and operated. They are also among the richest and most powerful lobby groups in the state. They don’t make money by rehabbing convicted criminals so they don’t become repeat offenders, they make money by keeping those prisons as full as possible.
This lobby group is why Texas will be among the last states to decriminalize marijuana, let alone legalize it even for medicinal use. Marijuana convictions are big business in Texas, along with other misdemeanor level drug crimes because those fill these private prisons and fund a lot of law enforcement agencies in the state.
That makes sense. People making money from incarceration gives me the willies. The incentives are just bad. Have you read Frank Baumgartner’s book about the death penalty? Apparently Houston is the execution capital of the country and the ideal of equal justice under law is basically just a slogan. Also plugging it because he was kind enough to answer any and all questions from a lowly grad student a couple years ago.
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Blaming school districts and cops. Perhaps it’s culture that doesn’t care about education or obeying the law? For every “crap” school I’ll show you plenty of kids who learn and move on. For every rich school I’ll show you kids who did nothing and are failures. It’s iq and culture in the home. Stop trying to put all of society into a monetary or racial algorithm. Society isn’t an equation to be solved.
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@FarmerJayhawk @benshawks08 @wissox @Texas-Hawk-10
Nice discussion. One thing to add is the effect of zoning restrictions as an allegedly race-neutral tool that has been highly instrumental in perpetuating segregation and resulting educational quality differences.
Sidenote: A recent article somewhere discussed the correlation between gun control resistance and race. In the 60s through the early 90s, apparently the NRA and Republicans largely supported certain types of gun control. Those eras’ highly visible “criminal elements” included the Black Panthers and inner city gangs committing drivebys with assault-style weapons (resulting in the ban that expired in 2004).
The article discussed how gun ownership among whites has exploded, and now the gun rights organizations think it is a divine right to get any gun they want. But they didn’t think so when it was blacks who were the targeted owners.
I don’t think it is necessarily a compelling argument, but it is food for thought.
Incidentally, the studies of racial bias based on names mentioned earlier include a number that show applicants with “white-sounding” names get approved at a substantially higher percentage with identical financials.
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Savage Inequalities, a devastating look at how schools differ by zip code and The New Jim Crow, two excellent books on the subject.
Before we moved from Louisiana we lived in a nice suburb of Baton Rouge. Top schools in the state actually and the facilities were very nice. They just installed a video scoreboard that is the largest in the nation for High Schools. Down the road where I taught, in the same parish, our football team and the soccer team I coached had to use other teams fields because the lights caught fire. At a similar school I was at a game where one of the lights exploded, shrapnel narrowly missing a group of students in the stands. Savage Inequalities indeed.
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Texas Hawk 10 said:
@FarmerJayhawk Another example in Texas of holding minorities down and a contributing factor in the disparity of conviction rates and sentence lengths is the prison system. I can’t speak on other states, but in Texas, most prisons are privately owned and operated. They are also among the richest and most powerful lobby groups in the state. They don’t make money by rehabbing convicted criminals so they don’t become repeat offenders, they make money by keeping those prisons as full as possible.
This lobby group is why Texas will be among the last states to decriminalize marijuana, let alone legalize it even for medicinal use. Marijuana convictions are big business in Texas, along with other misdemeanor level drug crimes because those fill these private prisons and fund a lot of law enforcement agencies in the state.
The American prison system is slave labor. I would say it’s broken, because in reality it is but for the purpose it is actually used for it’s perfect…
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@BShark It is interesting that most people have no idea that slavery is NOT absolutely illegal in the US. The 13th amendment prohibits slavery or involuntary servitude except as punishment upon conviction for a crime. The 8th amendment (cruel and unusual punishment) limits the treatment that can be meted out, but probably will continue to be broadly interpreted until it effectively negates the exception to the 13th.
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Great discussion above.
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@wissox In the district I work in, there’s only 4 football stadiums total. None of the high schools have on campus stadiums for sub varsity teams. We have the main stadium where the varsity teams play. There’s an auxiliary stadium and two stadiums on middle school campuses. That’s 4 fields to play games on for 5 HS varsity teams, 15 sub varsity HS teams and up to 48 middle school teams (12 middle schools, 2 grade levels with 2 teams each). One of the middle school games each week is played at a local private school’s field just to make the logistics work. It’s been about 20 years since our district has had a team reach the semi finals of the state playoffs. The biggest reason is because of the lack of quality facilities in the district so kids that have real D1 talent are frequently recruited by local private schools or other school districts with better facilities.
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… Trouble brewing from the NCAA?
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Texas Hawk 10 said:
@FarmerJayhawk Another example in Texas of holding minorities down and a contributing factor in the disparity of conviction rates and sentence lengths is the prison system. I can’t speak on other states, but in Texas, most prisons are privately owned and operated. They are also among the richest and most powerful lobby groups in the state. They don’t make money by rehabbing convicted criminals so they don’t become repeat offenders, they make money by keeping those prisons as full as possible.
This lobby group is why Texas will be among the last states to decriminalize marijuana, let alone legalize it even for medicinal use. Marijuana convictions are big business in Texas, along with other misdemeanor level drug crimes because those fill these private prisons and fund a lot of law enforcement agencies in the state.
And local law enforcement has extreme privilege to confiscate property upon an arrest. Finally some of this has been called out by media, including national media because of specific local jurisdictions operating far beyond any good spirit of law enforcement and fairness.
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Just the other day, my sister who works on a jobsite in Connecticut said they were doing some roadwork excavation, had the area blocked off with some big roadway cones and police officers helping direct traffic. At one point, a car did not obey the officer directing traffic, rolled slowly into the barricade, almost into the excavation where people were working. The officers approached the car and find the driver slumped over, starting to turn purple, bags of drugs in the passenger seat. The driver was overdosing. They gave him those meds that bring him back and basically save him. Driver says he is on his way to pick up his kid from school. Officers proceed to allow him to drive away. When the angry construction workers who almost got rolled up on ask the officers why they let him go with the drugs out everywhere they said that they are instructed to not arrest black people for drug offenses. If the person was white, he would have been arrested per the cop.
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Just a note: My comment before the one on slavery had a final paragraph about unequal rates of approval but I didn’t say for what!. This reference was about mortgage applications where the researchers sent identical financial statement and credit history information to lenders, with only the different names. Caucasian sounding names were approved for mortgages far more than black ones.
I have always wondered about the methodology of these studies because to accomplish truly identical applications with only different names you would have to falsify something in the application. And that is a federal offense! Maybe they get clearance to do a study from HUD or something.
Anyone remember the sting operation in Chicago where the US Attorney enlisted local attorneys to investigate the local Bar community and Cook County judges? These attorneys helped uncover a plethora of corrupt judges, clerks, prosecutors, and court officials.
In Chicago, the Machine always gets its revenge: The perps turned around and filed ethics complaints against the undercover lawyers who were the front men offering the bribes, alleging violations of the Code of Professional Responsibility’s prohibition of dishonest conduct since they lied in pretending to be offering bribes.
Reminds me of my drug dealing clients in the Army who routinely would try to get the undercover cops to sign sworn statements that they were not cops.
Law was so much fun!
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“… I may not be a smart man, but I know what love is, Jenny…”
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I just read (in an actual paper printed on newsprint!) that the NCAA has ordered Mary Hardin-Baylor to vacate its 2016 Division III national football championship and 29 victories over the 2016-17 seasons because the football coach let a player use his car for more than 18 months.
Wow, they are REALLY trying to set some strong precedents here!
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Tough Love. Guess Uber wasn’t an option
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@mayjay that’s a lot of games in 2 years
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@Crimsonorblue22 15-0 in '16, 14-1 in '17. They lost in the champ game in '17.
10-0 each season, then 5 rounds in their NCAA tourney.
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@mayjay UMHB is a top D3 program so that’s definitely a big blow for that program.
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@Texas-Hawk-10 I read that it started as the “women’s department” of Baylor.
Back when that was the only safe way for a woman to be associated with Baylor.
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@mayjay It appears BU should have kept the separation. Wasn’t it only two or three years ago there was a big scandal involving BU football players inappropriate treatment of BU co-eds?
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@mayjay Baylor was granted a charter before Texas statehood in 1845. The college itself was coed, but the classes were still segregated by gender. Eventually they split a few years later with the male university moving to Waco and merging with Waco University to become Baylor and a female university (Baylor Women’s College) that eventually become known as Mary Hardin Baylor during the Great Depression.
I have quite a few friends that have gone to each school so I’ve heard about their histories several times before.
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Cliff Clavin for the win!
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HighEliteMajor said:
Cliff Clavin for the win!
Sometimes you want to go Where everybody knows your name
And everyone likes seeing you walk in the door! Like all the KU bucketeers, for example.
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With affection of course.
