Democrats And Race

If you're a conservative, or a civil libertarian, I doubt you'll need to go beyond the opening question and responses from last night's debate to know that the Democrats aren't for you. Check this out: I'm quoting from all responses in brief

Q: In 1903, the noted intellectual W.E.B. DeBoise said the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line. Is race still the most intractable issue in America, and especially, I might add, in light of today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision which struck down the use of race as a factor in K through 12?

Hillary:

You can look at this stage and see an African American, a Latino, a woman contesting for the presidency of the United States. But there is so much left to be done. ... You can look at the thousands of African-Americans left behind by their government with Katrina. You can look at the opportunity gap, the Cradle to Prison Superhighway that The Covenant talks about, and you can look at this decision today, which turned the clock back on the promise of Brown v. Board of Education, that was resting on the fact that children are better off if they are a part of a diverse, integrated society.

I'd argue that if minorities can contest for President, what is it exactly they cannot achieve in America? And let's not forget some we didn't leave behind in Katrina ... they went on to initiate a murder crime wave in Houston. Is that the government's fault? Did we bus them there on that prison super highway?

Biden, who was obviously bused to a bad school in his youth. Last I checked the Supreme Court doesn't have a President.

The minority stated, had the rationale that was applied by the majority been applied the last 50 years, we would have never, never overcome the state’s effort to ignore Brown versus the Board.

But we can do something about it, and the place to start is through the next president of the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

Richardson:

Race is a major issue in this country, and the next president has to talk about it....

And I believe very strongly that the next president is not just going to have to pass laws and take the steps necessary to reaffirm affirmative action and take steps to make sure that our schools are integrated, but also the next president is going have to lead and speak passionately about a dialogue among all people.

What a git 'er done attitude, ay? Politicians accomplish so much when they talk about it, don't you think? How about allowing Americans to talk about what they want to talk about, as opposed to leading some national group therapy session as Prez, Bill? Yawn ....

Edwards, who hasn't uttered a non-demagogic word since he started running:

These two Americas that I’ve talked about in the past -- man, they are out there thriving every single day. We have two public school systems in America -- one for the wealthy, one for everybody else. ... And by the way, also making sure that every single American, including people of color, are allowed to vote and that their vote is counted in the election.

Obama ... who apparently lived in the wrong America for Edwards. Along with attending school overseas, he graduated from: Punahou School, formerly known as Oahu College, is an exclusive[2] private, co-educational, non-sectarian college preparatory school located in Honolulu in the U.S. State of Hawaii. What, did Marshall write him a recommendation to there and Harvard?

You know, this is where Thurgood Marshall and the team from Brown crafted their strategy. And if it hadn’t been for them, I would not be standing here today. 

Kucinich remains a collectivist to the very end, he goes on to state he wants day care for 3 - 5 year olds installed as a Constituional right.

I want to share the remarks of Barack Obama, ... the judicial branch of government, because they go out and tell people, "Pull yourselves up by the -- by your bootstraps," and then they steal their boots. (Laughter.) And finally, we need to take the resources away from war and military buildups and assure that every child should have a chance for a quality college education as well.

Gavel - who says racism will always remain, so let's at least do away with the war on drugs in the meantime. How did he get in the room?

Let me add that racism was here with us at the beginning of this country. It was here in the last century, and it’s going to be with us in the 21st century. And one of the areas that touches me the most and enrages me the most is our war on drugs that this country has been putting forth for the last generation.

This group has nothing positive to offer America on race relations, or anything else, as far as I'm concerned.

Comments

[Phoenix]

I can't argue with a thing you said. I can add a few things. Change teacher education programs in college so that they're at least realistic. And train would-be teachers to use discipline. I'm thinking a retired Marine sargeant would be good for that training. Of course, teachers are not allowed to discipline anyway, so what's the use. If there was a way to get rid of the fear of PC, a whole would change - in every work place. But, god, has it screwed up schools.

I know what you're talking about with the kids you can peg for disaster early on. I had plenty of friends who taught first, second, third grade, and the horror stories they'd tell made the horror stories I'd tell funny.

And our special ed department had more money and more teachers than any other department in the school. And I taught half the kids as policy dictated the kids be 'mainstreamed' part of the day. I loved it and took them all, but we teachers used to gripe and gripe about how 'useless' and stupid the special ed teachers were.
That's a mean, blanket statement, but plenty of them were useless.

[Phoenix]

Oh. Get rid of the NEA so schools can fire rotten teachers. That would help.

Best teachers we got during a shortage were retired military. It always took them a 'shock period' to realize how uncivilized civilians were, but they got on and the kids loved them. Kids like discipline. It's that simple. And the military guys had it down.

[rwilymz]

Laughingman. Oy.

Yes, public schools are largely funded by property taxes.

And the property values in cities is nearly always greater than the suburbs, and with almost no exception greater than rural.

Hence the property taxes collected in cities is greater -- sometimes grotesquely.

But property taxes fund a great deal more than schools. Libraries, roads, sewage, fire protection -- those are just some of the items listed on my property tax bill. Rural communities have lower property taxes largely because they have fewer roads, no sewers, volunteer fire departments; suburbs, higher because they have more roads, sewers, a paid fire department and a li-bary; cities highest because the whole place is paved over, they've got so many sewers they build tunnels just to hold them et cetera.

Property taxes in cities are not paid by renters -- directly. But by the property owners. And the high tax rate is what makes owning in a city a cost-prohibitive venture.

But all this means is that you're dancing around the edges of the issue. City schools do not suffer from lack of funding. First of all, as has been pointed out, there are grants of all kinds to "equalize" $$/student.

Second, there is a law of diminishing returns in play: at some point -- and fairly low on the $$/student scale, from what I remember -- the more money you throw at education, the less and less educational effect it has.

My school district [rural/suburban] spends [iirc] about $5,500/student/yr. The big city in my state, Chicago, spends about 3X that. Our grades are significantly better than theirs, but we've got an inane batch of laws that mandates -- near as I can tell from weeding through it:

1] equal spending per student across the state... which means that my district gets a whole shitpot full of money to throw at education -- so we're building new schools that we technically don't need, and we're building them like mad. We have no other use for the money. AND

2] 'equivalent' spending until GPAs across the state reach parity ... which means that Chicago schools are going to get money thrown at *them* until their GPAs match ours ... at which point, we'll keep having money thrown at our schools until our $$ match the $$ spent in Chicago to match our GPAs.

We're very likely to be spending $100K/student by the time it's all done.

I can think of a great deal more, and better, things that can be done with this largesse than providing terraced gardens in front of elementary schools.

[nowingker]

Whatever, money is not the problem with urban schools, you can throw as much money as you want to at urban schools and it still will not raise the graduation rate as we've been throwing progressively more money at urban schools for THIRTY years and there has been no progress.

Again with the 20 year old data....you aren't any better than the right wingers and their hysteria.