StrangeSox

Honest question, how does this help anyone but the traders who can get that access, how is that not pure rent-seeking with no wider benefits?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 1, 2013 -> 12:43 PM) Ugh, SS, your bleeding heart is too much for me. I'm done wasting my time with this crap. Yeah! How dare I care about widespread poverty in the wealthiest country in the world! What a bunch of unimportant s*** when we've got THE DEFICIT to think about!

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 1, 2013 -> 12:41 PM) But those stupid decisions kill any shot you have at becoming middle class or more! That's a HUGE component to this. Right, you want to scold the poor for being immoral because they didn't walk the perfectly error-free path you believe they should walk that you yourself never had to. The upper-middle class teenager caught using coke is going to have a much, much easier time with the law than the lower-class teen. Those "stupid decisions" also arise from a whole host of systematic causes, especially crime, and the impact of those decisions varies wildly based on socioeconomic status. More importantly, millions of working poor (and increasingly poor middle class Americans) get some education, work hard, avoid crime and drugs and out-of-wedlock children and still have been losing ground rapidly over the past several decades. Citation? "Common sense" doesn't count. No, not really, it doesn't prove that anyone and everyone could escape poverty by bootstrapping some elbow-grease and getting some work ethics. It proves that some people have done it through a combination of natural talent, circumstances and luck. It's not an actual solution to poverty. Middle-class jobs are disappearing, meaning that the middle class is becoming more desperate and the opportunities to escape poverty aren't there. I think your problem is every single discussion with you involves having to discard bad-faith strawman after bad-faith strawman because you've got a very limited worldview and don't seem to care one bit to expand it. My preferred system is mostly reflected in modern-day Scandinavia, which I believe exists on Earth. No, I'm not. This is yet another bad-faith strawman so you can keep defending your own unearned privileges as legitimate and justified without having to actually put forth any thought or effort. Right, and you're completely, 100% wrong and this places the entirety of the blame for poverty on the poor themselves. Where's the quality education? Where are the jobs? (they're in Bangladesh, where our great plutocrats can pay labor less than $.25/hr and have little or no workplace safety and environmental regulations and attempts to organize labor result in people being murdered--this results in great profits for the capitalists, exploitation for the Bangladeshi and lost entry-level middle class jobs for 1st-world workers! a trifecta!) OMG! learn to f***ing read, I'm out.

QUOTE (farmteam @ May 1, 2013 -> 12:22 PM) Exactly. Which is at least partially the result of the policies SS was talking about in his first post. Poverty is absolutely cyclical and self-reinforcing. This is intentional or, at best, a helpful byproduct of the hoarding of wealth and power by others.

QUOTE (farmteam @ May 1, 2013 -> 12:23 PM) You're right, it is a problem. Just focusing on different things, I guess. Focusing on the alleged moral failings of the poor is just a way to defend the current system that has benefited jenks (and myself!) immensely while disadvantaging others.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 1, 2013 -> 12:22 PM) Common sense? The fact that there are a number of CPS schools doing just fine? The fact that they just closed a bunch of schools because they were being underutilized and wasting money? I didn't say it wasn't A problem, I said it wasn't THE problem. And to the extent it is a problem, the leadership isn't a bunch of rich white yuppies from the north side making all of the decisions on spending/allocating resources. "Common sense" is just another way of saying "my pre-conceived ideas." CPS school funding is not equal as the neighborhoods they serve aren't equal. They're closing a bunch of schools, which is highly controversial in both the number and the selection, not because they were "wasting money" but because populations have decreased. You hand-waved it away as being important to the issue at all. The leadership isn't a bunch of rich white yuppies, but the board is hand-picked by one who's known for being a huge asshole and buys into some terrible public education policies as well (so does the Obama admin.) Nope! You know what has? Recognizing the privileges I've enjoyed and actively searching out other perspectives. How about you? How have your views been formed? You took one law-centered class and think you understand how Chicago "handles the poor." Chicago is one of if not these most historically segregating and racist cities in the country. Do you know anything about that person's life, if they could actually afford to pay 1/5 of their electric bill or why they might be b****ing? Interesting that your "common sense" and your "bets" serve to reinforce your pre-formed conclusions. I'm going to say that cops are probably the absolute s***tiest source of information on urban poverty you can possibly go to. Local news is probably in the top 5 with them. Why not start following some writers who actually study this? Crack open some sociology works? I don't think I've ever seen you explicitly agree, but either way, you still fall back to your concern-trolling "but what about the few that ARE lazy and shiftless drug-addicts?!" And I don't think you can agree generally with what I said there while asserting that society provides people with every opportunity to succeed.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 1, 2013 -> 12:12 PM) And it would be equally beneficial for your side to actually admit that SOME poor people REMAIN poor because they don't want to work at it. It's fathomable that a poor person that gets their food, shelter, health care, education and personal property handed to them would rather just say "i want more" instead of spending the time/energy to become educated, get a job and get off the system. Or worse, that people who make stupid decisions in life (drugs, crime, kids) actually have some blame. Maybe. Just maybe, that's a possibility? Everyone make stupid decisions in life. There's much less margin for error for the poor when they do, or maybe none at all. I could make dumb decisions in life regarding drugs, crime and kids and probably come out okay; my older brother did on the first two and is doing alright. Had my family been poor, he would probably have spent at least a few months in prison. Your whole view of poverty seems to be centered on a minority of people who do not work even though they could; the working poor and lower-middle class don't even enter into the picture for you. I fully admit that I don't care about some concern-troll "moral hazard" fringe cases that do not represent a majority of poverty. No, it absolutely does not. Again, this is your born-on-third privilege speaking. That point is incontrovertibly wrong. We provide people with a substandard education on how to fish and then tell them to go catch their own dinner after somehow purchasing their fishing rod and supplies, oh and don't forget that access rights to the rivers are owned by a handful of people extracting huge rents from anybody who wishes to fish them, and the few public streams are increasingly polluted due to relaxed environmental standards and insufficient ability to enforce. That it's possible for some to bootstrap themselves out of poverty doesn't mean that we should accept our system that produces so much poverty or that it's possible for even a significant minority to escape it. Especially these days with record corporate profits, free-trade, high unemployment, decades of stagnant wages and exploding wealth and income gaps. Yes, he does, and he's called Donald Trump. More seriously, systemic privilege that benefits the wealthy, whites over other races and men over women absolutely exists. Racism isn't limited to "hahaha! I'm going to enact Black Laws!" As I linked in the Collins thread, everyone is biased; in America, this bias manifests itself in favor of ethnically European males, and wealth is always a great way to control power, too. http://www.boston.com/news/science/blogs/s...aXC1K/blog.html

QUOTE (Jake @ May 1, 2013 -> 12:06 PM) We can't get smart policy enacted until we move away from political discourse that blames poor people for poorness. Since it is fathomable that a poor person can become rich, the discourse pretty much stops there. Racism is over, poverty would be over if those assholes worked harder. Yup, and both of those beliefs are 100% wrong.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 1, 2013 -> 11:57 AM) The people with the real control of the CPS are local, not the state. From CPS leadership to the unions. Funding isn't the majority of the problem for CPS. In some cases, sure. But the lack of funds or the condition of buildings etc. is not the primary cause for CPS failing. Source? Harper was the focus of a public campaign for underfunded urban schools as recently as 2006. It's possible that some additional resources have been made available, but this is one particular high school out of many. Losing that counselor/social worker is going to have a substantial impact on their ability to handle issues that arise and prevent them from getting deadly. That episode of TAL was focused on gun violence, so it isn't surprising that they did not focus on educational funding and other classroom issues. Blindness caused by privilege/lack of exposure. You've never been poor, you've never had to 'bootstrap' your way out of poverty and yet you still believe that "everyone is given the chance to succeed." Leading to.... Like just getting by day-to-day in poverty? Again, though, how much do you really 'know' about this 'culture,' what it values, how it operates and why that is? I believe that the "culture" issues you want to scold the poor over (it's not just an urban problem, remember, so let me know what's wrong with Appalachian 'culture') are a direct result of poverty itself and systemic disadvantages which absolutely continue to exist today. It's not because the poor are immoral or make more bad decisions than anyone else or that they're a bunch of lazy, shiftless drug-using leeches. The poor in this country, by and large, work harder than everyone else. The solution doesn't lay in telling them they just need to learn the value of hard work and a good education (which isn't available to many anyway). Where is all this supposed anti-poverty funding you keep saying has existed for decades? Where are you getting this straw man that I only want to dump money into current structures when I've repeatedly said that the structures themselves are the problem?

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 1, 2013 -> 11:52 AM) I wasn't necessarily targeting that towards you...but let's face it, liberals as a whole recently have been big on promises and short on the will to effectuate them. Agreed, modern US liberalism is pretty terrible, time to embrace full-on social democracy The Congressional Progressive Caucus has all sorts of policy proposals, including a full budget with numbers that actually make sense, but this goes completely ignored by both Democratic leadership and the media in favor of Very Serious budget proposals.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 1, 2013 -> 11:38 AM) Well, if your answer is throw money at the problem, It's not, at least not exclusively Not really. Absolutely false that providing aid to those who have systematically disadvantaged and oppressed is "equally detrimental" as systematically disadvantaging and oppression people for your own personal profit. It's also wider than just the racial issue that TNC discusses, that's just one of the most blatant abuses.

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 1, 2013 -> 11:37 AM) It's difficult to disagree with any of the points you make. But you obviously realize these changes don't occur overnight. This kind of systemic historical oppression does not suddenly disappear one morning and everyone is given equal access to all of the above things you mentioned. The long journey does actually begin with a single step. Hopefully that isn't interpreted as advocating more progress more quickly would not be appreciated, but these things take a long time to unravel. Attitudes take time to evolve and change. Unfortunately, this is the world we live in. Agree 100%. Especially the part about it being difficult to agree with anything I said! Absolutely policy is important; that's the goal. But you don't get policy without getting awareness and support, without pointing out these inequalities and getting people to agree with you that they're morally wrong and should be changed. I don't see where I've eschewed pursuing better policies and programs.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 1, 2013 -> 11:35 AM) But those problems aren't because white people in power are systematically choosing to keep black people down. You think education sucks in black neighborhoods? What's the ethnicity of the leadership making those decisions? Oh yeah, it's black people. It is? We have a majority-black state legislature that decides how schools are funded? No, not really. A central issue was how under-resourced they were, both in terms of building conditions, classroom supplies and the ability to attract good teachers because of salary and benefits. Do you really want to pretend that schools in Austin have the same resources as New Trier or Naperville 203? TAL noted that Harper was receiving special supplemental funding because they had substantial issues and that this funding was going away shortly, which meant they would have to lay off social workers, which means there are going to be a lot more unhandled issues there. You can give the wealthiest of the wealthy the best of everything for education and access and if they don't have any sort of will to better themselves, they might end up as President of the United States after failing in business multiple times. Or they could start up multi-million dollar investment funds based off of their dad's money and contacts. The margins for error are huge; the road to success is paved and smooth and might even have a chauffer should you go off-course a bit. For the poor, the roads are in ill-repair, crumbling on the edge of a cliff that might collapse through no fault of your own, and your car is 20 years old and might break down at any moment. It's really appalling to see the assertion that the poor are poor because they don't have any "will to better themselves," especially from someone born onto third base.

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 1, 2013 -> 11:23 AM) It also doesn't mean that those currently living in poverty shouldn't do their best to try and improve their lives rather than using the oppression of the past as an excuse. I don't agree that the oppression is solely in the past. Even if the blatant, open policies are gone, we are still very much living with the results of those policies and that ongoing inequality is oppression in and of itself. There are still people who personally benefit from making sure the current system which results in exactly this sort of poverty is maintained (this crosses racial lines).

What's our modern urban housing policy besides gentrification? How equal are the educational resources between poor and middle-class or wealthy neighborhoods? Or the economic resources? The social resources? How do you correct generations of systemic, intentional impoverishment? There are still millions who lived through these recent policies or who are the children of those who did. Hell, racist housing/mortgage lending is as recent as the last decade. How can you pretend that people are given equal opportunities to succeed? It's not as if the systemic inequality issues caused by poverty have recently disappeared; they've only gotten worse in the past few decades and are barreling right along that same track. You're really projecting the classic "born on third base and thinks he hit a triple" mentality.

I've posted this animated history of market trading volume before, but seems relevant: That change is just over a five year period. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012...ay-hft-edition/

It's a 401(k) World and It Basically Sucks

Shock? Living in a country that's been torn about by violence for his or her entire life? I read elsewhere that some where thinking it was a police or military vehicle.

How high-speed traders are exploiting loopholes on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412..._LEFTTopStories Not sure how this is supposed to benefit anyone but those wealthy enough to buy this sort of access in the first place.

This was another powerful piece by TNC that he alludes to in his last sentence above, Terrorism is Politics by Other Means

The Chicago History Museum has a section that touches on this, too. That's why it's so infuriating for me to see people blaming the poor for being poor (and this crosses racial boundaries e.g. Appalachia), as if their lot in life is solely or even substantially due to individual moral failures. It's not; poverty is systemic and it's intentional. And whenever we're talking about gang violence and failing urban schools and numerous other topics, we're always dancing around the underlying, unifying problem of poverty.

that's one good piece of advice: avoid the mall/chain stores

last five games his OPS is 1.343, last 10 it's .930. His TWTW+ has skyrocketed, too!

Ta-Nehisi Coates has a running series on the public policy that has created and reinforced urban ghettos. His latest post is on Chicago. an earlier post here and here

The Guantánamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi He was tortured, beaten, and humiliated, and he remains in prison. Here is his story, in his own words. (more at the link) Disgusting. He has never received a trial, of course.