America Is A Terrible Country

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by stefan

Dead serious, in the last ten years, how many social movements have received success due to internet awareness raising where they would have otherwise failed? Occupy was a failure, Assange is stuck in an embassy while Wikileaks is rapidly fading into obscurity, countless movements so heavily based in signal boosting have imploded on themselves because of a lack of actual action.

Yes, talking on the internet was the problem with these, and not brutal government crackdowns and attempts to delegitimize, arrest, torture, and/or kill participants.

[The Kneumatic Pnight]

Originally Posted by pocheros

3. set up third party organizations to keep the police accountable (does this exist in the US? *not sure*)

There are some, but police districts within the US are often fairly decentralized and individual intransigence within these decentralized districts are often met with a relative dearth of institutional ways to force compliance.

Originally Posted by pocheros

4. get rid of the godawful funding system that schools are currently forced to use (IIRC school funding is correlated to nearby property values, right? So schools in poorer areas get less funding?)

Firstly, school funding is not really pegged in this way, so what you're going to be seeing causing such an effect is the way the US handles school funding. Specifically, schools in the US are funded semi-independently at three levels: municipal, state, and federal. That is to say that municipal and state spending are usually never going to go fund another municipality or state. Therefore a more wealthy municipality would theoretically have a stronger tax base from which to fund schools, and therefore be able to provide more funding per student.

In practice, a few states like mine pool all municipal spending and disburse it across the whole state with state funding (which is to say, one would be basically paying two separate education taxes to the state which would then be divided up in their own unique ways and distributed at the same time). And every state has funding designed to bolster spending in poorer areas and minimum per-pupil spending quotas for every school and district. And then the federal government provides its own method of attempting to do the same thing.

So, from there, as to your base idea that school spending is associated with property values: I cannot actually answer that. But, I think, probably not. If anything the picture is a bit stranger.


[That would be per-pupil spending in each school district by district poverty quintile. Low would be districts with the lowest incidence of students from families below the poverty line and high would be those with the highest.]

(Interestingly, and not really spelled out in this, poor rural areas are somewhat left out compared to high income rural areas, particularly fringes around urban areas. Meanwhile, high income cities are similarly [perhaps more steeply] underfunded per-pupil than impoverished ones.)

[Bells]

Originally Posted by Kim

We could also abolish for-profit prisons.

How much does it cost to the taxpayer per month to sustain a federal or state non-profitable prison on the current structure? How much it would cost if you took out the for-profit inmates and inject them into the federal system?

Find out those numbers and you'll learn why For-Profit is seen as a positive thing in some states.

You wanna make them work their cost? Where will you set the line that defines them as working slaves for the government? How about civil rights and human rights? How can you uphold the costs of a non-profit system that si better than the current one without putting more money out of your pocket for it? And if you are Ok with paying more to have a better system... how are you going to convince the other millions of people on your country that don't like to pay more taxes?

You wanna impose those extra taxes only on really rich people? Watch the economy and job growth take a nose dive...

"no for-profit prisons" sounds Altruistic as fuck.. but the practicality will be put in question within seconds after the idea gets mentioned.

Establish a set of basic human rights and basic standard of living for those in prison.

Already exist. Both in national and international form. The problem is not setting standards. Setting standards is easy... words on a paper, any schmuck can do it. The problem is maintenance, empowerment of the state and enforcement of those standards. You can write 10.000 new rules with a heart of gold, it will do no good if they are not getting actually done.

Fund serious research on understanding those who commit crimes that are actually bad and keeping psychological staff on-hand and involved in every prison that exists.

Already a thing. You want MORE of that? Fair enough... where is the funding coming from? Are your educational standards in the country adequate to create the type of professionals you are talking about? If not, the problem is not research is education and jobs (that since they are on no-profit prisons, go back to the tax payer).

You say every prison, but not every city has the structure to prepare and invest in those professionals. Just there you already have about 30 other serious problems with Logistics and local education priorities, funding and structure.

Fixing these problems would be easy for those in authority. It's just that authority likes having millions upon millions disenfranchised and locked up.

No it's not... it's just an easy caricature to make. So very very easy... i know quite a few here like to think of anybody "in power" (whatever the fuck that means...) as a member of the league of doom, but that's just a Fogged Delusion... Not to got the other way around, because there ARE in fact evil people in power who want to subdue those weaker and easy to prey on.... but to think that those with Autority can just snap their fingers and make it happen sounds like you are getting your facts about the world more from movies than from any other source.

The world is not black and white, evil is not black and white... this is not an easy thing to fix, it cannot be done overnight, it is not all about a signature in a piece of paper and the stream of consequences you haven't even thought off are so huge you would probably question yourself if you knew, before making such watered down thin claims....

Capitalists like profiting off slave labor. Horrible people like making the prison system into nothing more than a revenge scheme.

Talk about conjecture....

Historically, you can point out that trend, yes... just like with Global Warming. I can pick a number of years and show to you, with real data and facts, that the Global temperature has gone DOWN instead of up... but if you see the entire measurement instead of just a slice of it, you can clearly see that it has gone up non-stop.

Same thing with Capitalism, i can find tons of examples of shitty companies running slave factories or even worst, big companies hiring slave factories overseas to work for them... but on the overall view, for a serious company, a really big player in the capitalist world, there is nothing better than a well trained, well payed employee doing his job and refusing offers from competitors... and as much as you might desire to consider that every rich guy on the US (or the world) has a secret clubhouse where they meet to scheme and plan everything together.... that's just not real. It's the same flavor of nut you see on 9/11 conspiracies and Fox News.

Perspective. It fucking matters.

Capitalists like to make money. Any industrialist will tell you that it's ten times easier to make money by paying people the necessary for them to be happy than to keep holding them down forever on TRUE slavery... and by the way... if you even consider calling up some bullshit like "modern slavery" or "walmart employes slaves" or whatever the hell thing like that... don't bother. Slavery is one thing and one thing only... it's terrible, it actually still exists in many places in the world and it's not "making just barely enough"... it's WAY worst than that.

Shitty jobs are not Slavery, they are shitty jobs on shitty companies. Be in for profit prisons or out of them. Even comparing that to people who actually suffer real slavery in the world is insensitive and quite frankly repulsive.

To say Capitalism is a revenge scheme to create slaves in prison is as warped as anyone can get from making opinions without educating themselves...

The only thing keeping things from getting better are terrible people in positions of power.

So hire better people to run your country. Whose fault is that? No matter how much money gets injected in the system, money is not mind control. And the small tactics to keep away certain groups of voters are largely noneffective to the end game. You simply cannot pull a scheme that big these days and make it successful in countries like the US.

And no. It's not "the only thing". It's WAY more complex than that... WAAAAY more complex.

If you REALLY think the Prison system is messed up and need to change, then you really need to think what's the price you're willing to pay to make it change... cause it's not going to be free. Thinking it even can be is a Pipe Dream.

You cannot request for change you can't comprehend. The fact that you think any piece of this puzzle is "easy" shows how "evidence-free" you really are about your thought process over this. There are many clashing issues that go beyond "Attacking the rich bastards" and blaming them for everything...

Again, this is not an impossible problem. Capitalism is the root of some of the most evil things upon this earth. Slavery in society and in the work place ARE things that exist (just not as it has been mentioned here so far). And a better system to Rehabilitate instead of Punish would be wonderful... but it's not the snap of a finger that's going to do it.

[stefan]

Originally Posted by Krylo

Yes, talking on the internet was the problem with these, and not brutal government crackdowns and attempts to delegitimize, arrest, torture, and/or kill participants.

This has happened with literally every protest movement in history, it's a part of the obstacle you should plan for well in advance, not a fucking excuse. Risk of getting your teeth kicked in and your arms broken is par for the course in protest, its why molotov cocktails were invented.

Occupy was more or less screwed from the beginning because they had no real goals except "get people aware of wall street being a bag of dicks," which was rightfully called out well in advance of the infamous crackdowns by several veterans of other social movements. (also because people already knew Wall Street was a bag of dicks, an excellent example of people "helping raise awareness" when awareness is already as fucking high as its going to get)

I feel I should clarify which side of the argument I'm on before this gets too out of hand. I am not in the camp of "signal boosting is useless, work from within the system! ." I am totally on the side of belief that the system is fucking broken and needs to be torn down, violently if necessary. I just feel like sharing posts on twitter is going to do absolutely nothing towards that goal at this point, because anyone that WOULD agree does, and anyone that doesn't won't.

Originally Posted by Bells

How much does it cost to the taxpayer per month to sustain a federal or state non-profitable prison on the current structure? How much it would cost if you took out the for-profit inmates and inject them into the federal system?

Find out those numbers and you'll learn why For-Profit is seen as a positive thing in some states.

I have seen the numbers and they largely show that for-profit prisons actually end up costing more in taxes than state run prisons. Private Prisons are paid for by the government per head incarcerated, the "profit" is for the third party that owns the facility.

[Bells]

Originally Posted by stefan

I have seen the numbers and they largely show that for-profit prisons actually end up costing more in taxes than state run prisons. Private Prisons are paid for by the government per head incarcerated, the "profit" is for the third party that owns the facility.

Than show the Math. You seen the numbers... you can provide some source for it. Also mind you that changing the current system for a better one is likely to increase those costs regardless....

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by stefan

This has happened with literally every protest movement in history

And every other protest movement in history has succeeded.

[stefan]

Originally Posted by Krylo

And every other protest movement in history has succeeded.

Many havent! Many have. However, almost all of them knew going in that they were on the losing side and didn't use it as a justification for not succeeding, when they spent all their time trying to "rile the masses into action" only to find that the masses don't give a shit about protesters until buildings have started to burn down.

Originally Posted by Bells

Than show the Math. You seen the numbers... you can provide some source for it. Also mind you that changing the current system for a better one is likely to increase those costs regardless....

here's a specific example.

[Kim]

For-profit prisons also use bribery and political leverage to bring people into the prison system who otherwise would not be being brought into it, because it makes them money.

Also, Stefan, the Egypt protests made major use of social media like Twitter and Facebook. They were far more successful, in the short term at least, than comparable US protests.

It turns out, and this may blow your mind, not every protest against the status quo is successful! Therefore, anecdotal evidence pointing to failed protests is easily refuted with anecdotal evidence of successful ones!

Tomorrow, we talk about how sometimes the weather changes from day to day and how just because one loaf of bread is moldy not every loaf of bread that currently exists is moldy.

EDIT: And now your new post makes me wonder if YOU even know what the hell point you're trying to make by complaining about social media and blaming it for making people lazy.

[stefan]

Originally Posted by Kim

Also, Stefan, the Egypt protests made major use of social media like Twitter and Facebook. They were far more successful, in the short term at least, than comparable US protests.

they also made major use of traditional methods of protest. Or did you forget about when Egypt actively shut down as many social media networks as they could, leaving the protesters to, you know, not rely on the internet to coordinate?

It turns out, and this may blow your mind, not every protest against the status quo is successful!

no shit.

I think you do not understand that my entire point was that people try to use social media as a replacement for action, which is a bit hard to quantify since nobody actively tracts unacted protests in potentia, but there is certainly a massive and unignorable population of people who claim to be activists while quantifiably doing Not A Fucking Thing to justify the label aside from wasting bandwidth with reblogs and making a shitload of noise.

[CABAL49]

Originally Posted by Bells

Than show the Math. You seen the numbers... you can provide some source for it. Also mind you that changing the current system for a better one is likely to increase those costs regardless....

Originally Posted by ACLU

Private prison companies, however, essentially admit that their business model depends on locking up more and more people. For example, in a 2010 Annual Report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) stated: “The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by . . . leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices . . . .” As incarceration rates skyrocket, the private prison industry expands at exponential rates, holding ever more people in its prisons and jails, and generating massive profits.

And while supporters of private prisons tout the idea that governments can save money through privatization, the evidence that private prisons save taxpayer money is mixed at best – in fact, private prisons may in some instances cost more than governmental ones. Private prisons have also been linked to numerous cases of violence and atrocious conditions.

Quoting ACLU cause I have no idea what I am doing here at two in the morning. http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/private-prisons