Rougarou

Man. Sounds like anyone with a brain is bailing on public schools. This means that private schools are going to be stretched with the influx and home-schooling will probably 10x. 2020 is really going to be the "Lost Year", into the first part of 2021 as well.

So underrated. And you have no idea unless you have kids and accidentally see them! Moana is hot garbage.

What is the price of tea in China?

This. Millennial's don't like people showing up unannounced to your house (or even announced) but the olds love it. It's known.

The thing that is tough about making the call to send back the kids or not is you just don't know how civilized the families are of the kids who will share the classroom with your kids. Do they care about wearing masks? Do they wash their hands? Many other questions, etc. We are going to try to send our kids back in two weeks. It's going to be nerve-wracking. We've (the parents) have proven we have no ability or interest in doing the needful and sacrificing our jobs and work, in order to make an at-home-zoom-schooling thing successful. Further the school has pretty much communicated that last Spring was a mulligan where everyone got participation points and A's and B's just for showing some effort, but this Fall it's suit up or you can/will be failed. This was communicated when the school said, "You can do the online option until September 30, but there will be an expectation that virtual students keep up the pace with in-person students and classroom and there will be no discount in tuition for choosing the virtual option." Let's see, we have to balance and strike the right chord of being wise and doing due diligence to de-risk your schooling strategy with at the same time actually engaging in academics that are enriching and developmental. In that sense, I don't think you can make a bad decision (unless you are just not caring or thinking about it) and every parent will make a personal decision that they think is best for their kids.

Dat Nguyen probably makes more money running Chick-Fil-A in Southlake or Grapevine or wherever than he did playing for the Cowboys...and almost as much as playing for the Aggies in the early 90’s

The best synopsis of this debacle I’ve seen says “This decision about TikTok should be an agonizing attempt to balance the trade-offs between national security and economic freedom, and instead it is mafia-style grifting.”

This part is what I meant when I said it would be bad for equality: Who do you think is going to stick around for the chemo phase and have to deal with all the proverbial nausea and feeling like death? Those who can't afford to leave. The poor, the marginalized and those who need the most help to begin with. Who will be overwhelmingly the victims of a city with heightened amounts of mayhem while the city transitions? Poor, people of color. Schools go to crap, etc. If inner city Houston/Dallas were to disband and had no functional PD while burning it down to start over the right way, those who live in Washington Ave and Montrose or Uptown or whatever, are just going to leave to Kingwood or Allen or any suburb area who are not burning down their PD and then wait to return when the chemo is over and the cured state has been established. It's almost as if Defund the Police needs to be a Federal enactment with guidelines and deadlines, meaning you can't opt out (like other civil rights movements like desegregation) so there aren't options to bail on a community during it's time of need and transition.

Also I should apologize here as it just dawned on me; I should never have said it was a “stupid” idea, when what I meant was it was a “bad” idea, with respect to potentially adverse affects I’ve outlined a few times. Stupid instead of bad is loaded language and not productive to the conversation and comes across as adversarial, which is why the nice little person turned into an angry elf earlier maybe, in his defense. Words matter and my error on choosing the wrong adjective.

Totally fair and that’s why I then clarified with my disclaimer language saying essentially that I’m not a black person in any community and don’t live with systemic racism and have no authority or agency to define if it’s a 7 or 9 or 2, in any community where this is being seriously protested, so if this is the decision then onward and upward and I hope I’m wrong about the effects. I should have led with that language and disclaimer Instead of inserting it mid-conversation.

Some people might think that's fine and okay. I absolutely 100% would object to outsourcing anything to China. I'm no fan of the CCP. At all. Too immediate/dramatic is a good way to characterize how I think of it. Not because I don't think long-term it's a better solution and answer, but because I think if you do a hard and fast cut-over from A to B, there is a chance you are going to break too much and it might not be repairable.

You are an idiot and obviously a troll and not worth responding to anymore. Ignore.

Dude what? I just read no less than 7 long form journalism pieces about this and the comparison was made there, I just lifted it from them. The murder rate was that of "Tijuana, Mexico" the Chief of Police said and "Honduras where gangs controlled cities" another said. That is factual and using other journalists language. Do you want me to submit citations in APA? You are pathetic.

This was really insightful, thanks for sharing!

What is dumb is that there is no transition period but rather a hard cut-over.

I'm a racist moron because I think defunding the police is bad for already bad things like wealth and income inequality between races, home values, and school/education opportunities for black people? You and Upperwestside are moronic because since the above has been my thesis belief since the jump, I would be a racist if I was pro-Defund the Police, as I understand it. Ultimately, I acknowledged and will continue to acknowledge that my input and voice is a privileged one and that if black people want to push Defund the Police because they are the ones facing the abuse and I can't pretend to know how they feel. I feel like calling someone a racist is pretty much the worst thing you can call someone, so I'd like to hear why you went from 0 to 10 in short order. I am not a racist, but I think you might be.

I think you were the one that posted it; I've read a good 6 or 7 long form pieces from a variety of sources (NPR, WaPo, Politico, Salon, etc.) to get a varied point of view, and I think you summed it up well. It was experimented (through political necessity) and there was nothing left to lose, and the results that have been made available (there have been some accusations of transparency with data issues) represent a mixed bag. It's not the feel good, turn-around, zero to hero story that some activists want to paint it as and it hasn't been a failure either. One thing for sure is that Camden is better today than it was before. I would 100% advocate for using this model in other bombed out and depleted cities with over 170 open air drug markets and high crime rates that rival MS-13 strongholds and other failed states. I just don't think that most places are complete reclamation projects at salvage value.

You are an angry elf.

You are militant. I'd definitely cross the street the get away from you.

You are right, in and of itself, in a vacuum. But when that rationalization of municipality is done in contrast or when compared to other municipality's who do not rationalize budgets, you see a picture of disparity. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In any event, a good old fashioned "needs based analysis" or assessment should be done based on data for every city. Maybe large, urban city A needs more mental health resources and less code compliance cops and tony, suburban zipcode B needs more traffic cops and less swat/gang units, etc. But do that for every city and municipality, as a good first step.

Vaguely from the debates because of Booker. I think what you are implying is that a) there was an experiment or case study done on defunding the police and infusing social services and that information and research is readily available from which we can read and make determinations on efficacy and b) that it's so ubiquitous (your first post was like "hey numbnuts there was an American city not to be specifically named because everyone should know this already that has tried this, but results are not good but also not bad") that everyone engaged in this conversation should have already made themselves familiar with said study? I'll do some reading up on it-- thanks for the input.

Also, since we have a new page and it might be missed, I'm still really interested in @Huckleberry's help to calibrate on what I might be missing in my understanding of the phrase "Defund the Police" based off my response to his question. Also super interested in @Huckleberry's own definition and any clarity he might offer about how he understands the term "Defund the Police" and so I can where the differences are.

Super curious about this-- can you post something about it? If you don't have links, I can do my own googling, just name of the American city and the initiative? Year?