cinematicdiversions
cinematicdiversions's JournalThe Rent is to damn high.
Just got off the phone with my friend who was in tears. Her rent is going up another $200 a month. Her rent is low for the area (1600) and she lives in a rural area but rents are up almost 30% in our town this year and they are not slowing down.
She is a single mother of two including a special needs child, but she makes too much for any government support. She looked around for another place to rent, but thier prices were even higher. In many cases, there is simply no room at the inn.
We talk about inflation, but there are two types of inflation. Homeowners have seen capital gains in the tens of thousands while their mortgage stays unchanged. Renters pay twice the average homeowner per month and have seen nothing but misery. It is a real divide.
Our area has a moratorium on building new apartments while the county catches up with schools and roads. Also, environmental groups are banning them as well as people concerned with the disappearing open spaces. So new housing of that type is not in the cards anytime soon. Meanwhile, the already built ones simply increase in price.
For the renter the inflation rate is not 6% it is closer to 25%. We need to keep that in mind.
I know Some fine Democrats got some gruff for this but can we all now agree
There really are superpredators like Darrell E Brooks ( Waukesha Christmas parade massacre. Dozens of other assaults and rapes of children and young adults of color.)
And sometimes we need to take a serious look at a justice system that allows bail and early release for such individuals. The vast majority of crime is committed by very few people that destroy hundreds of lives each.
Democrats are pushing tax breaks for the rich. They'll cry when voters punish them
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/22/democrats-are-pushing-tax-breaks-for-the-rich-theyll-cry-when-voters-punish-themThe last time Democrats held the presidency and Congress, the party spent its first year in power enriching big banks that had cratered the economy and then letting public money subsidize the Wall Street bonuses of their campaign donors. The spectacle gave Republicans a political bailout in the 2010 midterms, allowing them to depict themselves as anti-establishment populists challenging an elitist government.
Twelve years later, history is rhyming. Democrats were vaulted into office on popular promises to tax the wealthy, but they are now generating national headlines about their proposal to provide new tax breaks narrowly targeted to enrich their affluent blue-state donors – just as a new survey shows nearly two thirds of Americans see the party as “out of touch with the concerns of most people.” And now the Republican machine is gearing up to demagogue the issue in 2022.
The situation is like a storyline from Veep satirizing liberal elitism: As millions of voters are being crushed by health care costs and higher energy prices, and as Democratic lawmakers have abandoned a $15 minimum wage, Democratic leaders are pushing a regressive proposal to allow wealthy property owners to deduct more of their state and local taxes (SALT) from their federal taxes.
This initiative, which would provide almost no benefit to the working class, isn’t some small tweak. After Democrats gutted their wildly popular initiatives to expand Medicare and lower drug prices, the tax initiative has now become one of the most expensive provisions in President Joe Biden’s entire Build Back Better legislation.
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I know the issue is complicated but much as cancelling student debt is a giveaway to high income white woman. This is a giveaway to property owners that made a lot of money in house equity over the last few years.
It truly is tax breaks for "paper" millionaires.
So in reality where are we when in comes to incarceration and justice.
I see constant promotion of ending cash bail, alternatives to the police and alternatives to incarceration. These are major think planks and policies of our party. They are promoted through books, speeches and the more progressive members of congress. They are celebrated here at DU with passionate screeds.
Then one of these misunderstood criminals does something criminal on tape and all of a sudden it is death penalty this, where were the police that and why was he out on bail?
So which is it. Do we get rid of cash bail, incarceration and defund the police. Or do we allow emotion to get in the way of social justice?
I am not saying which is the right answer, but it would be helpful if there was some sort of consistency. We can't cry racial justice one minute and shoot the shoplifters or no bail for someone beating his girlfriend nearly to death the next minute.
Pomona defunded school police. But after a shooting, campus officers are coming back
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-11-05/pomona-schools-defunded-police-a-shooting-brings-them-backJust four months ago, community activists celebrated a milestone decision in the Pomona Unified School District: The Board of Education defunded school police, removed officers from high schools, and brought in proctors trained to de-escalate tensions. But prompted in part by a recent shooting near a campus, the board has reversed course and brought back police, saying that student safety is paramount.
The unanimous vote during the Oct. 27 school board meeting came after a shooting near Pomona High School left a 12-year-old injured by broken glass and debris. The pressure from activists that led the board to eliminate funding for police and reimagine school safety in June gave way to new pressures from those who believe that the Pomona Police Department plays a crucial role in keeping schools safe.
“An incident such as this drives us, as leaders, to examine our practices and our protocols in caring for students and staff in regards to mental health, conflict mediation, emergency procedures, communication facilities and safety,” Supt. Richard Martinez said during an Oct. 20 meeting after the shooting.
The Pomona school board is not alone in its angst over school safety policies and policing that emerged after nationwide protests over the killing of Black people by police officers and evidence that police disproportionately target Black and Latino students. The Fremont Unified School District last November voted to discontinue its school resource officer program, only to restore the program by May.
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You can't learn in an unsafe environment. While not all schools need resource officers those that do should certainly have the option and funding available.
California Tries to Close the Gap in Math, but Sets Off a Backlash
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/us/california-math-curriculum-guidelines.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20211105&instance_id=44676&nl=the-morning®i_id=126406904&segment_id=73603&te=1&user_id=60772750d12b15f85907c4e211fc21f6Proposed guidelines in the state would de-emphasize calculus, reject the idea that some children are naturally gifted and build a connection to social justice. Critics say math shouldn’t be political.
If everything had gone according to plan, California would have approved new guidelines this month for math education in public schools.
But ever since a draft was opened for public comment in February, the recommendations have set off a fierce debate over not only how to teach math, but also how to solve a problem more intractable than Fermat’s last theorem: closing the racial and socioeconomic disparities in achievement that persist at every level of math education.
The California guidelines, which are not binding, could overhaul the way many school districts approach math instruction. The draft rejected the idea of naturally gifted children, recommended against shifting certain students into accelerated courses in middle school and tried to promote high-level math courses that could serve as alternatives to calculus, like data science or statistics.
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The attack by honestly progressives that should know better against intelligence and education of children (See also NYC eliminating gifted programs and AP classes to help combat racism) is bizarre
Some people are better at math than others. Some are better athletes. Or more creative. We should help develop and celebrate these differences.
Harrison Bergeron is supposed to be a dystopian story not a fucking blueprint.
This kind of crap is exactly why we lose elections. No parent wants their kid uneducated, so they will be more equal with other children.
Why do we get the fundamentals of education so wrong. (Politically at least)
Parents are voters. Parents are often also customers of our local school system.
Let's look at some recent policies.
Eliminating advanced and gifted classes because they are racist.
Mainstreaming often violent and disturbed special needs students into classrooms
Separating students by ethnicity for special lessons, assemblies etc
Covering up sexual assault under the guise of student privacy.
Common Core math. well I think we all remember that from a few years ago
Closing schools leaving parents completely in the lurch due to the pandemic.
Now these are not all Democratic policies (though some certainly are) and all of these policies are not necessarily wrong (I was in favor of closing schools for example) ... But one can certainly understand how a voter looking out for their children would be concerned and frightened by such happenings even without a right wing spin.
So when the right wing show a video of some teacher making students declare themselves privileged because of their sexual orientation or perceived race you can imagine how that can easily be spun with all this other stuff that is all to real.
The Murders Down the Hall 393 Powell Street was a peaceful home until residents started dying
The Murders Down the Hall 393 Powell Street was a peaceful home until residents started dying in brutal, mysterious ways.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/nycha-nypd-woodson-houses-nyc-murders.html?utm_campaign=sk&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=morning_brew
When Myrtle McKinney first moved into the Carter G. Woodson Houses in 2004, she felt lucky to be there. The complex is one of only 38 public-housing developments in New York City reserved for seniors, and the waiting list for a one-bedroom can stretch on for years.
A Jamaican emigrant in her early 70s, she had raised seven kids working as a housekeeper in Florida and the Bahamas before relocating to Brooklyn to live with her daughter. By the time her application was approved, she was desperate for a place of her own.
After settling into apartment 6M, McKinney quickly jumped into the bustling social scene enjoyed by the development’s 450 residents. She joined a knitting circle in the first-floor senior center and spent her mornings relaxing with friends amid the rows of shade-dappled benches in the courtyard out front. In the afternoons, her neighbor in 6E, an easygoing man in his early 70s named Leon Gavin, whom everyone called “Music Man,” liked to DJ dance parties in the courtyard from a small speaker hooked up to his mobility scooter. It was like a middle-school dance, one resident said: girls on one side, boys on the other.
Situated in the heart of eastern Brooklyn along the border between Brownsville and East New York, the Woodson Houses occupy nearly an entire block in one of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods. But to the residents who lived there, the complex was a refuge, “a place of peace,” as one family member put it. Over the next decade, though, that feeling would slowly disappear. The complex had always dealt with its share of low-level crime, but around 2013, an influx of new tenants seemed to bring with them new dangers. Now, when a resident’s caregiver was buzzed into the main tower’s front door, a seemingly endless stream of interlopers sneaked in after, vanishing into the dark corners of the high-rise. Longtime residents suddenly found themselves accosted in the hallways by strangers asking for money. Some smoked crack in the stairwells and on the roof. And while some residents fretted over the conditions, others started supplementing their income by renting out couches to drug users off the street. Things got so bad that at one point, a small band of users took over an elderly tenant’s cramped second-floor apartment and turned it into a thriving crack den.
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Long Read but very interesting murder (multiple) mystery. Sad story on how the city and state of New York failed the elderly.
The anchor-outs: San Francisco's bohemian boat dwellers fight for their way of life
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/31/anchor-outs-sausalito-california-richardson-bayFor decades, a group known as the “anchor-outs” enjoyed a relatively peaceful existence in a corner of the San Francisco Bay. The mariners carved out an affordable, bohemian community on the water, in a county where the median home price recently hit $1.8m.
But their haven could be coming to an end – and with it, a rapidly disappearing way of life.
The anchor-outs live aboard semi-derelict boats abutting the town of Sausalito, an upscale enclave just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin county where mansions boast floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the water. Tourists arrive by ferry from the city on weekends, strolling the promenade of restaurants, wine bars, art galleries and boutiques.
The agency that oversees the local waterway known as the Richardson Bay has in recent months begun a fervent crackdown on the boat dwellers, who they say are here illegally and pose a threat to safety and the marine environment. Determined to clear the waters, a hardline harbormaster has even begun confiscating and destroying boats that overstay their welcome.
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Be interesting to hear from some locals. Sounds a bit like the "wrong kind of people" living to near some valuable real estate.
Rats, mold, roaches: Howard students stage sit-in over housing conditions
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/25/howard-university-students-protest-housing-conditionsMold. Rats. Cockroaches. Mushrooms growing under the sink. For undergraduate students attending Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington, these and other conditions have prompted students to protest, staging a sit-in and sleeping at the university’s main student center for the past two weeks.
Since 12 October they have protested what they describe as deplorable housing conditions, including mold on expired air filters, rat and cockroach infestations, and mushrooms blooming on dorm room ceilings and under sink despite on-campus housing costing upwards of $12,000 a year.
The group’s demands center on concrete plans from the university to address housing woes and solutions to issues around transparency. They want an in-person town hall with Howard’s president Wayne A I Frederick, a permanent reinstatement of all affiliate positions on Howard’s board of trustees, a meeting with student leadership to outline plans addressing housing-related issues, as well as immunity – legal, disciplinary, and academic – for protesting students as participants have received threats of expulsion and other punishment for their participation.
But they have been met with hostility from university officials. Emails from Howard University officials such as Howard vice-president of student affairs Cynthia Evers have also threatened to punish students who participate in the sit-in, including with expulsion.
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School receives a ton of money yet doesn't take care of the basics. Many of the students are upper middle class and are not used to living in such deplorable conditions. Another set of bizarre choices such as hiring Phylicia Rashād or getting rid of Classics education.
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Member since: Sun Mar 28, 2021, 05:24 PMNumber of posts: 1,969