caulfield12

I didn’t write anything about someone being owed more. The reality is that we spend many hundreds of billions of dollars on socialism, in the form of corporate welfare supported by both parties. Where are the protests against that? There haven’t been any since Occupy Wall Street got nowhere. The Communist solution here in China is to provide scholarships to ethnic minorities, to provide a free house or financial subside for those moving to less developed, western provinces of the country where most ethnic minorities live. In addition, if you have a child as a single mother, it is not entitled to a public/government education and you also have to pay all the childbirth expenses by yourself. Is that what we want? Or an abortion/unwanted kids/one child situation that has caused an imbalance of six males for every five females...meaning 1 in 6 boys can’t get married to a Chinese woman and have/raise a family, leading to a birthrate of barely 1 child per family and a rapidly aging population that 20-30 years from now won’t be supportable due to aging demographics. In fact, because of the extraordinary costs of raising children in China/South Korea/Japan, many are choosing single life and freedom instead of marriage. So every system in the world comes with a cost, either short or long term.

I thought George Soros was the boogeyman, as he’s somehow behind every worldwide conspiracy over the last 50 years? The answer to your first question is subsidizing corporations and the richest individuals in America. Social welfare includes things like Medicaid, SNAP (what used to be called food stamps), housing assistance, and home energy assistance. But it also includes things like unemployment and veteran’s benefits. It’s challenging to get a hard number on what the US spends on social welfare programs because different reports include and exclude various programs. Back in 2011, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama released a report that included 83 different programs and clocked in the spending at $1.03 trillion. The CATO Institute published similar numbers the following year. But both of those numbers include things like The Earned Income Tax Credit, which you have to work to earn. The clue is in the name for cripes sake, earned. They also include funding for Head Start programs. I know some programs can be abused, but I’m pretty sure Head Start is something we can all agree is a good thing. Education for little kids from low-income families is pretty hard to demonize. If we separate those kinds of programs from things like SNAP and housing vouchers, the kind that some people seem to resent, the spending comes in at about $212 billion per year. That’s a lot, but it’s a lot less than $1 trillion. https://www.listenmoneymatters.com/corporate-welfare/

Well, pretty much every Japanese-American from the western United States from 1942-1945.

Since we’re on the subject of single parents and broken homes, two of our last four Presidents came from broken homes. Bill Clinton’s biological father died in a car accident before he was born, and he was raised by his grandparents until the age of four... Although he immediately assumed use of his stepfather's surname, it was not until Clinton turned 15[12] that he formally adopted the surname Clinton as a gesture toward him.[4]Clinton has described his stepfather as a gambler and an alcoholic who regularly abused his mother and half-brother, Roger Clinton Jr. He threatened his stepfather with violence multiple times to protect them.[4][13] Perhaps their backgrounds are what made them uniquely suited (empathy/vision) to win two consecutive terms, something not accomplished by a member of their party since FDR. Without those formative life experiences, they arguably wouldn’t have succeeded to the degree that they did.

https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-single-parent-families-by-race#detailed/1/any/false/37,871,870,573,869,36,868,867,133,38/10,11,9,12,1,185,13/432,431 The data (single parent households by ethnicity) hasn’t changed much in the last decade. White single mothers remaining at 24%. For all ethnic groups, +/- 2%, basically. There are many other factors at play, but this is where you see a strong correlation with standardized test scores (with Asian families far and away leading the pack). That said, many Asian kids (both inside and outside the US) are subjected to both psychological and physical abuse (a few of my Vietnamese born students in Kansas City remarked that anything less than an A in math would result in a whipping)...and there’s certainly a much higher incidence of suicide as well, with heightened study pressure being cited as one of the primary factors. And it’s easy to point out problems. But what are the solutions? It certainly won’t end up being “defund the police/let looters and lawlessness run free,” but that requires a much more sophisticated, nuanced conversation. The problem here is that BOTH sides have to be willing to communicate and make compromises. As soon as the President and leaders in the GOP (besides Mitt Romney standing alone) acknowledge there actually is a systemic societal problem, not just about policing, but massive wealth-economic inequality across the board, maybe there can be some forward progress. Or they can continue to refuse to listen at their own electoral peril.

There are currently 1,935 Covid-19 patients in hospitals across the state, topping the previous hospitalization record of 1,888 patients on May 5, according to new data from the Texas Department of State Health Services. Texas was among the first states to relax its statewide stay-at-home order, allowing it to expire April 30 and some businesses to resume operations May 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/texas-reports-a-record-high-number-of-hospitalized-coronavirus-patients-after-state-reopened-early.html It’s much more likely from a scientific standpoint that Covid-19 is currently declining in virulence compared to re-opening not being correlated to jumps in the massive, across-the-board numbers of cases and hospitalizations. That said, we’re far from out of the woods in the Western Hemisphere due to all the problems in South America, Central America, Mexico and pretty much the entire South, Southwest and West of the United States...

https://www.clearinghouse.net/chDocs/public/FH-NY-0024-0034.pdf Well, we’ve literally got thousands of examples in housing/redlining. We’ve got a ton of statistics in databases around the country on racial profiling and disproportionality in sentencing. The discrepancy in penalties between crack and powdered forms of cocaine. The Trail of Tears/Wounded Knee Massacre The Chinese Exclusion Act The Dred Scott Decision (or simply counting slaves as 3/5th’s of a person in the US Constitution) Japanese-American Internment Camps like Manzanar during World War Two (particularly enjoy visiting all those German camps in the eastern half of the US.)

Seems there must be something missing....? A bit awkward phrasing. It can’t really be stating that up to 97.6% that went on ventilators in those age ranges died eventually, can it? I guess it means that somewhere between 80-97.6% died, but hopefully much closer to 85% than 90-95%.

Dow only about 2,500 points off all-time high of February 13th...

“At it’s heart, the dissolution is just getting out of the union contract. There will still be police, but clearly they intend to think hard about which jobs belong to police and which belong with other depts. Newark moved most of their cops to beat cops, and hired civilians as investigators among other changes and was successful. Do police as formed need to do road safety policing? Crowd control? Should domestic disputes sit elsewhere? Police responsibilities have been stretched (as have teachers) as a catch all. It’s possible to rethink that.” Yet why do I have a feeling Fox News is warning everyone that all police departments in US will cease to exist on Monday morning...and that the NRA will dutifully encourage all their followers to arm themselves to the hilt in order to protect their 2nd Amendment rights???

Riverside, CA

Black and brown communities are coming together in California...but, as you can see from this video, it’s not a necessarily a uniform process. There are lots of scars over the past two hundred or so years of American history.

The last time you would have been right to worry was the Lawrence Massacre of 1863, led by Quantrill’s raiders. https://www.yahoo.com/news/buffalo-mayor-says-elderly-protester-121757748.html Buffalo mayor tries about face, blames 75 year-old as an “agitator” The mayor of Buffalo has said that the elderly protester filmed being knocked to the ground by police in a now viral video was an “agitator” who has been asked to leave the area “numerous” times. Byron Brown said that the 75-year-old man, Martin Gugino, was trying to “spark up the crowd of people”. ... Buffalo Police Benevolent Association President John Evans said the officers were “simply doing their job” and the man “slipped” during the interaction, which was aired by local news WBFO on Thursday night. “Our position is these officers were simply following orders from Deputy Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia to clear the square,” Mr Evans told The Buffalo News. “It doesn’t specify clear the square of men, 50 and under or 15 to 40. They were simply doing their job. I don’t know how much contact was made. He did slip in my estimation. He fell backwards.”

Greg, why do you now sound like someone in CT hanging out on a rooftop in the mid 1960’s, afraid of Malcolm X or the Black Panthers... America, by and large, still leans to the right on “law and order” issues. Defunding every police force across the country overnight isn’t happening. And everything we’ve been doing for the last fifty years isn’t working out that well, either. You never know, maybe those crazy liberals in Minnesota or California just might surprise us all...because spending as much money on private prisons/incarceration as we do is equally insane. The ten countries with the highest incarceration rates are: United States (737) Russia (615) shouldn’t be too proud to be ahead of an authoritarian (formerly Communist) country Ukraine (350) see point 2 South Africa (334) should definitely not be too proud to lead a formerly apartheid country Poland (235) see point 3 Mexico (196) after June, 2015, maybe they should be more afraid of us, than the other way around? At best, a draw Brazil (193) attempting to emulate Trump in leadership style, Covid (lack of) response and poverty/incarceration rates

$40 trillion, after all, is only 40% of the entire net worth of all Americans combined. An ambitious plan, for sure, but we need to return to the real issue of some form of tangible, concrete police reform. Not defunding all departments nationwide, and certainly not turning the White House into an armed fortress, either. It’s going to come from investments (or redistributions), like the LA and numerous big city police departments around the country, major US corporations, foundations, Mike Jordan, professional sports leagues, Softbank’s $100 million investment fund for minority tech entrepreneurs. It’s going to be a number in the trillions before all is said and done, but it won’t be in the form of direct payments across the board. Scholarships, for example. Investment zones. An adoption of best practices from the top 10-15% of charter schools that can be applied across the board to public education. Prison reforms. Child nutrition and healthcare. A real, honest appraisal of why the War on Poverty failed, and ways in which public/private partnerships can bridge the gap, instead of just throwing money at problems or creating more government programs...there has to be a better approach, in the same way that every sports league has embraced analytics, but it can’t be just cold hard numbers. A more humanistic response, focused on shared or common values that we can all form a consensus around as a nation. Accountability, but, most importantly, results. Mayor Eric Garcetti said he will direct $250 million to youth jobs, health initiatives and “peace centers” to heal trauma, and will allow those who have suffered discrimination to collect damages. The money will have to be cut from other city operations; Garcetti, backed by City Council President Nury Martinez and his new Police Commission president, said as much as $150 million would come from the Los Angeles Police Department. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-05/eric-garcetti-lapd-budget-cuts-10000-officers-protests

Reached for comment by Newsweek, Biden's Deputy National Press Secretary Matt Hill pointed to the information listed on the campaign's website. Hill highlighted a particular sentence, which reads: "As Biden has said in this campaign, a Biden Administration will support a study of reparations." ..... But he has not committed to funding financial reparations for the descendants of slaves, a key issue for many black American leaders and activists. Instead, he has pledged to formally study the issue if he is elected president. https://www.newsweek.com/will-joe-biden-change-his-stance-reparations-1507923 Officers Charged in George Floyd's Death Not Likely to Present United Front https://www.yahoo.com/news/officers-charged-george-floyds-death-190215541.html Really well-researched NY Times article which eventually delves into the backgrounds of each of the four Minneapolis officers involved in the Floyd case, especially pertinent as this has been discussed extensively in terms of training/education for police departments of the future...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/06/politics/us-protests-george-floyd-world-moral-leader-intl/index.html In the Philippines, the convulsions in the US have also stirred incredulity. The country has a profound connection with the US, as the only country America ever colonized. More than 4 million people of Philippine heritage now live in the United States, and after Israel, it has the most favorable view of the US in the world, according to the Pew Research Center. The Philippines' political system was built on America's. Its constitution is modeled on the US bill of rights and is an enviable safeguard for freedoms in the Southeast Asian region. Despite those safeguards, the Philippines has a history of moving between democracy and authoritarianism. The current president, Rodrigo Duterte, has managed to wield extraordinary firepower to clamp down on the country's drugs trade. Thousands have been killed under his orders for police to shoot dead anyone suspected of being connected to the trade. Veteran journalist Maria Ressa, CEO of news website Rappler.com, said that although Duterte was worse than Trump in his use of force, the disregard for rights playing out in the US now will only vindicate his heavy-handedness at home. "Trump is very familiar to Filipinos. Many people have observed that he and Duterte have many things in common -- they are both sexist at best, misogynous at worst. They incite to hate and sometimes to violence, and they tend to divide and conquer, making it us against them, instead of providing a leadership that tries to unite and to heal," she told CNN. "But in general, Filipinos are stunned by what's happening in the US. It is familiar to us -- we have a president who tells police to shoot people dead -- but this is the United States. It's always been the guiding light, the values of democracy, the founding fathers' declaration of independence. And for the last three years, we and the world have grappled with who takes global leadership. We are wondering, has democracy failed?"

All along, the arguments starting in April were about people expressing their rights/liberties/freedoms. That state/local governments were depriving them of their opportunity to pursue happiness. Which is the most sacred American right? The First Amendment to the Constitution, or the inalienable rights to get a haircut, go bowling or go to get a cup of coffee? Of those activities, which one has the most potential to change our country, hopefully for the better? Which is worth fighting and dying for, as Americans have been doing willingly for 244 years now? My wife said something interesting when she saw that 75 year old pushed to the ground...that she always believed that America was the greatest country in the world until she saw the events of the last two weeks played out in the media everyday. She said “what’s wrong with America?” More recently, expressing the idea that she feels sorry for Americans. What happened to the shining light at the top of the hill?

If these protests took place in March or April, it would be a stronger point. Many have been forced to go back to work whether they like it or not...since the beginning of May. Rationally, if 1/3rd or 40% or whatever the number isn’t being careful, it pretty much means you’re eventually assured of getting it, unless you have the ability to stay indoors for another 2-3 months. The Coronavirus task force essentially has been disbanded...and all the headlines are on the economy and especially jobs news and the stock market. Psychologically, there simply wasn’t the stamina to keep this going beyond 8-10 weeks. We’re at double that amount of time here in China, only Grade 6/9/12 students are back in school (and that’s only due to national exams that determine placements for middle school, high school and university)...and the level of precaution and mask wearing is incredible. We still have checkpoints with mobile phone pass codes all over the city, and 8 million residents were tested over 2-3 weeks to find 300 asymptomatic cases at a cost of nearly $125 million. We still can’t even travel to more than a handful of Chinese cities without two week quarantines or massive restrictions. My son went outside for the FIRST time in almost 4 1/2, that’s how serious things are. Whereas in the US, even Dr. Fauci was basically encouraging people to go outside on Memorial Day weekend. As soon as all the GOP-led states outside of MD, MA, IN and OH decided to go in an independent direction...with the only “scolding” being against Kemp in GA for 24 hour news cycle’s worth of going too fast or recklessly, the writing has been on the wall. And you’re now seeing all those SE states, Texas, Heartland, Sunbelt and West being hit hard/er because of that determination to open the country up faster because it just happened to be an election year. Finally, almost none of the police/Secret Service/military police/National Guard have been wearing masks...it’s about a 5 or 6 to 1 ratio of protestors wearing masks to police, if not higher. And they’re disregarding masking guidelines while on paid, government duty...defying the CDC guidance which the President has disobeyed for all but 10-15 minutes behind the scenes at a MI Ford plant.

https://eand.co/why-america-is-so-hateful-4ef03915e156 How Racism Ruined America What Racism Really is, and How it Makes Americans Hate Each Other

Pick just the Top 5-10% out of the Academy, and pay them 50% more. Why shouldn’t some of our brightest Americans want to be policemen, serve in the Armed Forces or be public school teachers? Imagine a country where 93% of those who wanted to be police officers or teachers were rejected...and they all willingly were part of (government subsidized) five year education programs available at only the best schools in the country? Imagine how different the ultimate results would look. Finland is going through a deep economic crisis, and there are financial pressures on schools, just as there are on the rest of the public sector. But the five-year master’s degree for primary school teachers is not in question. Competition is fierce – only 7% of applicants in Helsinki were accepted this year, leaving more than 1,400 disappointed. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jun/17/highly-trained-respected-and-free-why-finlands-teachers-are-different

One can only wonder how many “insiders” profited off this information in early trading Friday morning. Amazing how these errors by the government and certain states only work in a “positive spin” fashion. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/economy/unemployment-rate-us-explained/index.html

One wonders if the same orders will go out over mail-in ballots...maybe they’ll argue the ink or paper was dangerous to groups od roving children who were purportedly stealing them from USPS mailboxes “en masse.” “(Gugino is) a veteran peace activist involved with the Western New York Peace Center and Latin American Solidarity Committee, said Vicki Ross, the center’s executive director. “I can assure you, Martin is a peaceable person,” Ross said. “There is no way that he was doing anything to accost or hurt. He made a judgment to stay out after the curfew because he feels that our civil liberties are so in danger, which they most certainly are.” Ross said Gugino has been undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. https://www.yahoo.com/news/75-old-man-shoved-ground-142946876.html

Only $40,000,000,000,000......we could take the national debt from roughly $25 trillion and increase it by 160% in one fell swoop. I can just imagine the faces of Grover Norquist, Mitch McConnell and the House Freedom Caucus. According to another online study, 40 Acres and a Mule in current dollars would run around $6.4 trillion.