Probably not what we were looking for…
They ought to go on strike and see what happens 
@John292 Brother, I prefer they didn’t being I’m a Virginian. Our Governor is a headcase bought by Bloomberg. I believe our State will throw him out on his keister next election. I will say tar and feathers would be too good for him. The chickens would be insulted. Same guy that went on the radio and said it was ok to kill newborn babies.
What do you expect with Governor Blackface Northam, the Fuhrer… and the lawless Democrats that have taken power and seem to be drunk on tyranny.
Next people getting sentenced to community service will be expected to build wooden shields or paint graffiti on the courthouse.
Government schools cannot be ‘improved’. They need to be removed. Then we can get to education. There was a city in Georgia that passed a law REQUIRING every adult to own a weapon. It didn’t take long for the ‘courts’ to declare the law unconstitutional, but crime dropped by about half!!!
I feel your frustration @John397. Schools can improve but parents don’t have much say in what gets taught nowadays. They aren’t being taught what I learned back in the 60’s and 70’s. Now it is OK to teach about Satanism and other forms of “religion” but not Christianity. Same for early indoctrination into sexuality. What are the drawbacks of a voucher system for education? At least that gives parents some choice.
why should ‘government’ interfere in education at all??? Just think what parents could do with all that property tax money the government steals.
That was Kennesaw Georgia, and it was back in the early 80s… 1982 or 1983. They passed a law that required every household to have at least one firearm. It was in response to a town in Illinois I think. Morton Grove, or Milton Grove, or Morten Grove (it might be Maple Grove… just thought of another possible name, have not searched it out yet, only remember it from back then)… not sure which, and they passed a law outlawing firearms within town limits (not sure how that was even considered Constitutional, but then I am not sure how a law requiring firearm ownership is Constitutional).
Crime rate in Kennesaw dropped significantly and the Illinois town remained the same or increased when they checked a year later.
I think the law is still on the books, though they may not enforce it.
I started reading:
Tom’s premise is that the USA was founded on four principles:
- Morality.
- Responsibility.
- Identity.
- Culture.
We have to recover these basic principles if we desire to restore our nation to the Republic our forefathers originally intended.
Our form of government is only for a virtuous people.
I would not hold my breath if I were you. We may see far worse, before anything starts to improve.
There is no single one thing that will reduce violent crime.
A large part of the solution needs to look at where most violent crime happens. And that is in our inner cities. We have to take a look at why that is.
This is the cycle that needs to be broken. (Bear with me, I’m painting with broad strokes for illustrative purposes).
Young kid grows up in an inner city ghetto. Because it’s a poor neighborhood, there is little in the way of tax income. Because most school budget is pulled from local taxes, the school system sucks. Good teachers go elsewhere for more money and better support infrastructure and less hassle from kids. Everyone in the school system knows these kids are destined for mediocrity at best. It’s not their fault, per se, it’s just the way its been for a long time and even the good ones eventually wear down from swimming upstream. There is an aura of “meh, why bother” that hangs over everything.
Young kid with no prospects (there is no dreaming of being a Doctor or Lawyer or Astronaut here), sees the only successful people around him… are drug dealers. They are the ones with money, cars, women, respect. This is who they can look up to and aspire to be. Dealing drugs offers them a way to also get money, cars, women, respect because that is pretty much the only route available. The alternative is maybe working for minimum wage flipping burgers.
Young kid deals in drugs and eventually… gets caught. He’ll get a felony rap and that effectively puts an end to even the slightest remotest chance of ever doing anything other than flipping burgers. He has now been effectively locked into poverty for the remainder of his life. Anytime he may want a little extra cash, dealing some drugs on the side is a quick and easy path. Likely, he’ll do more than one stint in prison, each time dropping out of society for a few years at a time.
Likely, during one of the times out of prison, he will have a kid, maybe several. These kids are locked into the same fate as the father.
So how do we break out of this cycle?
First, and most important, IMO is to fix the school divide. School budgets can’t be based primarily on local tax revenue because these impoverished neighborhoods will never be able to catch up. Many states distribute some funds across counties, and that is a start but I think also federal dollars are needed here as well. Vouchers are, IMO, not a meaningful answer since you aren’t fixing the school for all kids you are just letting some of them goto better school districts. Many times these kids don’t fit in, in some cases spend a lot of time commuting.
There are points in the liberal “Justice Reform” platform that make some sense to apply. And there are points in the conservative “Justice Reform” platform that make some sense to apply. I think a good approach uses the best of both, but in today’s political climate that is never going to happen.
I agree on some level with typically liberal perspectives on justice reform. Let’s not slap a felony on someone for selling a small bag of weed as that effectively cuts them off from meaningful employment forever. Let’s offer a real way back into society for felons who have paid their debt to society and not stifle them forever with the looming felony they got 20 years ago.
I agree on some level with typically conservative perspectives on justice reform. Let’s get the folks who commit armed and violent offenses locked up with stronger penalties. Let’s get the repeat offenders off the streets. Not necessarily 3 strikes which can often be too rigid, but perhaps some leeway for judges to push closer to maximum penalties for these folks how clearly are detriment to society and just pop right back into prison after getting out.
The harder part, and I don’t have all the answers here, is giving these folks opportunities that expand beyond flipping burgers. Goals they can not only aspire to, but actually reach. Invest in these communities with things like small business loans, crack down on crime so they can be safe. The more appealing option needs to be something like goto school and become a doctor to get what you want rather than sell drugs to get what you want. As long as dealing drugs or attaching to a gang is the “better” option or even the only option we can never break the cycle.
@Harvey I agree with you that we need to provide sound education for all of our kids. Our Federal Taxes provide $68B to primary and secondary education to the States this year. In addition, state and local taxes support education. The lottery’s big claim is the billions it provides to state education. Is it money provided or mismanagement of those funds by corrupt city and state politicians?
I think its a combination of those things, but primarily its a distribution issue (I know, thats commie talk 
). A school system in Beverly Hills has a vastly different budget than a school district in South Chicago. There are many different factors that go into that budget discrepency… Cost of living is obviously higher in some areas which require higher budgets (usually supported by higher tax income though), and student population varies.
I’m not saying don’t let Beverly Hills kids have access to “more better” education because they can afford it. But lets bring the bottom levels up. This won’t just affect urban kids (altho the topic here is reduction in crime and most crime is urban), but also rural kids who have the same problem.
Mismanagement plays a factor too. How many school districts just fell over this spring when everything moved remote? All those dollars spent on iPads and laptops, “remote learning software” and the like… and when push came to shove it folded like a lawn chair. Millions of dollars are spent on new stadiums while teachers have to pay for their own pencils. Stuff like that.
Slight sidebar/tangent
Colleges and Universities also get a big chunk of state dollars. And I think there is too much emphasis on “you have to goto college and get a degree”. I would bet about 80%+ of the people I know with a college degree are working in something that has nothing to do with their degree. There are some fields (STEM among them) that rightfully require higher education, but there is a huge swath of jobs across the country that pay well, are far from being automated away, and do not require 4years of college. Most of those jobs you can learn via apprenticeship or < 2years of trade school (often < 1year). Why stack up tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt when you are never going to use that degree? I won’t touch on the “100k+ debt to become an art major” topic because I will melt down 
End Tangent
But I am also saying its just not enough money. I don’t know where we get the dollars from (maybe push from higher ed, down into K-12), but some of the core things that we need in this country teachers, first responders, social workers, etc are the lowest paid.
Maybe one way to improve education, using your inference to institutes of “higher” learning, get back to the basics. Develop job skills. My grand-kids don’t need to learn 79 pronouns for identifying others. They do need solid Math, English, writing and science. Civics on what positively distinguishes the US from all other nations. History on the positive influence we have actually had on the rest of the world.
Kids of Indian/Asian decent didn’t get a reputation for being smart/studius because they were born with super computers hidden up their arses. In fact, when that reputation was being EARNED many of them were being born in thatch huts.
Being poor is not an excuse for being ignorant, for violent crime, or for not teaching your kids to value that chance to get an education (any education).
There are literally places where kids will walk miles to get to school, risking violent insurgencies, supported by families with NO education. Don’t try to sell me that ‘Someone can’t learn because their community doesnt have the tax base’, especially when what they lack is funded by the surrounding state and federal government.
Education is a huge part of this whole issue. It is a multi-issue subject. The decay of the family is where much of this starts. This hampers education due to a lack of parenting and poor discpline. I think the damn leftist teachers unions are part of the problem as well.
But nothing will change until people truly accept the fact that their actions and beliefs are on them. You can’t sit around waiting for anyone else to solve your problems for you. You must stop believing that you are a victim. You must stop thinking that government and society owes you something when you will do nothing to help yourself.
If we had a real education system,most of these problems would disappear, because with the Great Education system they could not control the EDUCATED.
There is no excuse for any of those things. I could probably have been more clear above. Poverty isnt the excuse/reason for these situations, but it is a factor in this situations along with several others. And specifically, I’m looking at poverty in Urban scenarios. Poverty in suburban and rural areas looks wildly different. All along the Appalachain chain (thinking West Virginia coal mine country, etc) is intensive poverty, and their murder rate is way lower but their suicide rate is way higher. Its a different “solution” to a similar problem.
And theres the rub. Another factor as I posted (maybe not clearly enough) is the father is in prison, and even when out of prison is usually absentee. The mother will also be apathetic and/or work several jobs to make ends meet and the result is lack of role models to show there is a way forward when everything they see pulls them back down. There is little to no support here.
Those kids in the hinterlands who trek miles to school, uphill both ways, know the way out of their thatch huts is through education (including sometimes enough to get out to western higher education, emmigrate, then bring the rest of the family).
The kids in South Chicago, they see the way out right on their street corner. The drug dealer in the nice car, with the ladies hanging on, and henchmen paying respects.
This just isnt true. Find a school in an urban ghetto, walk into any random classroom and look around. It is vastly different from a similar classroom in an upper middle class suburban classroom. Where is the breakdown?
And again, to be clear… education is not the only thing in the equation and “fixing it” will not on its own reduce violent crime. Its just one piece of the puzzle. I am also painting with some broad brush strokes here (again, maybe I wasnt clear enough) so its not like every violent criminal ran through the same upbringing.
You tell me…