American democracy health thread

Discussion in 'Politics & Current Events' started by superdave, Mar 11, 2018.

  1. Kazuma

    Kazuma Member+

    Chelsea
    Jul 30, 2007
    Detroit
    Club:
    Chelsea FC
    I again state that a lot of media folk are still in 2005, 1995, and for a few 1985.
     
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  2. dapip

    dapip Member+

    Sep 5, 2003
    South Florida
    Club:
    Millonarios Bogota
    Nat'l Team:
    Colombia
    Fawx Noos is set in 1955.
     
  3. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
    FC Sankt Pauli
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    @bigredfutbol

    The swivel eyed loon Prof Goodwin has been drawing a lot of attention in the UK as he tries to set out an ideological basis for the war on woke.

    He's now outlined what this will mean economically.

    It's very much the reversal of liberalism (i.e. the rollback of Thatcher). He says an economy very much like the failed economics of the 1970s! Especially with lots of subsidies to protect the 'non-woke' industries

     
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  4. dapip

    dapip Member+

    Sep 5, 2003
    South Florida
    Club:
    Millonarios Bogota
    Nat'l Team:
    Colombia
    I'm going to post this thread here because the recent discussion about IQ tests for immigrants. Arkansas decided to overhaul their already failing educational system and in principle it appears that there was logic behind penalizing schools that were performing worse in standardized tests (aka IQ tests):







     
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  5. rslfanboy

    rslfanboy Member+

    Jul 24, 2007
    Section 26
    Good find.
     
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  6. Deadtigers

    Deadtigers Member+

    Jul 23, 2015
    Independent Republic of the Bronx, NY
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Ghana
    It's the way to make it seem random. The Republicans took a gun and fired. The Dems didn't stop the republicans. And other news there are three people dead of bullet wounds.

    Like totally random stuff.
     
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  7. dapip

    dapip Member+

    Sep 5, 2003
    South Florida
    Club:
    Millonarios Bogota
    Nat'l Team:
    Colombia
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  8. Sounders78

    Sounders78 Member+

    Apr 20, 2009
    Olympia
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    France

    That's been the game plan since at least the 1980s when James Dobson of Focus on the Family made it explicit and started setting up support agencies. They didn't hide it back then either, it's just people in the mainstream weren't paying attention.
     
  9. soccernutter

    soccernutter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    Aug 22, 2001
    Near the mountains.
    Club:
    Tottenham Hotspur FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Check your email. Everybody but you has responded to the survey.
     
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  10. soccernutter

    soccernutter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    Aug 22, 2001
    Near the mountains.
    Club:
    Tottenham Hotspur FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Stop with this bullshit.

    If you are going to promote higher requirements for work, make it easier for somebody to find work, and also get to work. And then help them retain work.

    The "self-sufficient" claim is that those on welfare want to stay their, and never want to work. That is fiction.

    Since I'm in Colorado for a few days looking after dad and such, it has allowed me to contemplate. One of the things which has occurred to me is that the likes of Gaetz and Boebert and such are completely full of shit. They got concessions, but are not using them. But they all so performative, that while Biden is herding sheep with his well trained collie, McCarthy is herding cats with a poorly trained spaniel.

    I like NPR reporting - usually solid yet restrained (sometimes a bit too much).
    I cannot stand NPR interviews - they are almost all fluff pieces. It is why I don't listen to the segments where they interview musicians, even if they are interesting people.

    There are plenty in the media who are. On NPR, Mara Liasson would be great. Sam Sanders, who has moved into pop-culture, is very good. And then we get people like Terry Gross (Fresh Air) and Robin Young (Here and Now) are also good, though Terry Gross is the Gold Standard. The problem is that the one party which went rogue is not doing so for ideological reasons. They are performative.
     
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  11. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    It’s not fiction. Have you worked with that population? I have.

    You’re oversimplifying a complex problem. People on “the system” have as varied a relationship to that status as people not on the system have with their economic lifestyle. Slackers, strivers, most in between, they’re all there.

    My argument is different. Who cares if Mom is the “right” kind of welfare mom? We as a society have an obligation to give the kids a chance. Yeah, some people work the system to a smaller or greater degree. Anyone who works with that population knows that’s an incontrovertible fact. What bugs me is the obsession with it leads to two mistakes. One is spending a dollar to save 50 cents in benefits. The other is punishable shine kids because Mom is the “wrong” kind of welfare mom by denying benefits to the family.
     
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  12. soccernutter

    soccernutter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    Aug 22, 2001
    Near the mountains.
    Club:
    Tottenham Hotspur FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    https://www.npr.org/2023/06/04/1171159008/eric-investigation-voter-data-election-integrity
    (and also the Politics Podcast version https://www.npr.org/2023/06/02/1179...-voter-fraud-tool-fell-victim-to-conspiracies - it's about 40 minutes)

    How the far right tore apart one of the best tools to fight voter fraud

    On a night in January 2022, Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin stepped on stage in a former airbase in Houma, La.

    ...

    The group hosting the event — We The People, Bayou Chapter — is one of hundreds of so-called election integrity groups that have popped up across the country since 2020, motivated by former President Donald Trump's lies about voting.

    ...

    But Ardoin wasn't just dropping by to talk about electronic voting machines or mail ballot fraud.

    He was making an announcement: Louisiana would become the first state ever to pull out of an obscure bipartisan voting partnership known as the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC.

    ERIC is currently the only system that can catch if someone votes in more than one state, which is illegal. And election officials widely agree it helps to identify dead people on voting lists.

    But Louisiana was done with it.

    "This week I sent a letter to [ERIC], suspending Louisiana's participation in that program," Ardoin said.

    But this isn't just about Louisiana. 8 other states have also withdrawn.

    But why did ERIC get targeted?

    n January 2022, the tool drew the ire of one of the most prolific misinformation peddlers on the internet: a website called the Gateway Pundit.

    The right-wing website is known for pushing conspiracy theories, including the so-called birther theory about former President Barack Obama, and that survivors of the Parkland shooting in Florida were crisis actors. More recently, it published an article implying COVID vaccines were 98 times worse for people than the virus itself.

    About a week before Louisiana's Ardoin made his reference to "media reports," the Gateway Pundit began targeting ERIC. The website published a series of articles that falsely said the bipartisan partnership was a "left wing voter registration drive," bankrolled by billionaire George Soros, aimed at helping Democrats win elections.

    It's become clear the site ignited the election denial movement's fixation on ERIC.


    Trump's social media site also played a part in getting states to drop ERIC.

    This is a long read, but worth it. And for those who don't know, Parks' specialty is investigating voting concerns and conspiracies. And he is fantastic at it.
     
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  13. taosjohn

    taosjohn Member+

    Dec 23, 2004
    taos,nm
    ??o_O??
     
  14. soccernutter

    soccernutter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    Aug 22, 2001
    Near the mountains.
    Club:
    Tottenham Hotspur FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Indirectly. Have you forgotten my continuous mentions of the demographic I taught?

    And you are also oversimplifying it.

    We have an obligation to give everybody a chance. One thing you are completely missing is that most people need - yes, need - to have a purpose in their lives. Yes, not everybody, but when one has difficulty in figuring out what that purpose may be - such as exposure to various career opportunities - then it makes their life's meaning more difficult. I remember reading something about the cycle of teen pregnancy, and one of the things which was mentioned was that a poor teen having a child gave them a sense of accomplishment and purpose. And I witnessed this in my various classrooms.

    But I have to ask, why did you choose to identify "welfare mom?" Is that a particularly problem that men don't have?

    Some people hustle.

    Again, why focus just on moms? It is not moms which are the problem that needs fixing, it is poverty that needs "fixing." And by fixing, I mean greater support for those in poverty to be able to work their way out of poverty. Things like day care, public transportation, drug treatment programs, prison release programs, better social services (specifically for schools, but also across the board)...and so many more things.
     
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  15. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    indirectly. I knew that even without you telling us because I read your posts. One of us knows what he’s talking about, and it ain’t you.

    Saying different people are different isn’t oversimplifying. You’re being silly again.
    I’m acknowledging the incontrovertible fact that almost all of the families in the system with single parents are led by women, and very few of them have both parents at home.
     
  16. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    punishing the, I think
     
  17. Deadtigers

    Deadtigers Member+

    Jul 23, 2015
    Independent Republic of the Bronx, NY
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Ghana
    This may be the most sensible post you've ever made
     
  18. soccernutter

    soccernutter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    Aug 22, 2001
    Near the mountains.
    Club:
    Tottenham Hotspur FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Jesus ********ing Christ, is this a dick measuring contest to you?

    Yes, because people are complex and having multiple, competing motivations (at the individual level). And they have to function in a system which is not supportive. In fact, nobody here can properly explain it to the depth it needs to be dealt with.

    The system is poverty, not women with kids/as heads of households. Again, this is so much more complex, but your goal is to be right, not to try and work though ideas to solutions.
     
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  19. taosjohn

    taosjohn Member+

    Dec 23, 2004
    taos,nm
    You mean like the Mack/Brown/Dabney song from way back at the beginning of Jazz?
     
  20. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    My goal is to be right. Of course. What is your goal? To perform?
     
  21. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    The only Mack Brown I know is UNC’s football coach.
     
  22. taosjohn

    taosjohn Member+

    Dec 23, 2004
    taos,nm
    "That's Why They Call Me Shine." I believe Mack and Brown collaborated on the lyric and Dabney wrote the music. It was a favorite of early Dixieland bands until Louie Armstrong wrote a better one-- "Black and Blue." But I have never heard the term used in ordinary discourse in any of my present days... so it puzzled me to see you using it.
     
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  23. roby

    roby Member+

    SIRLOIN SALOON FC, PITTSFIELD MA
    Feb 27, 2005
    So Cal
    How could we forget.....

    [​IMG]
     
  24. dapip

    dapip Member+

    Sep 5, 2003
    South Florida
    Club:
    Millonarios Bogota
    Nat'l Team:
    Colombia
    Corporations are people my friends!

     
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  25. soccernutter

    soccernutter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    Aug 22, 2001
    Near the mountains.
    Club:
    Tottenham Hotspur FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Geezus ********ing Christ.

    First, yes it is well known that women have an unfair burden in this. But they are not the only ones.

    https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/policy-brief/transitions-out-poverty-united-states (date of publishing is not listed, but seems to be early 2010s)

    One quarter of all poverty spells begin after divorce, separation or other major change in family structure. More than a quarter of children’s transitions into poverty coincide with a change in the head of household. For both women and children, these transitions usually involve the departure of a male head of household.

    In this study, 25% begin with women who have kids.

    But...

    Changes in income and family structure are also associated with transitions out of poverty. A child who splits off to become a new head of household may reduce the financial need of the original family, but may form a new household that remains below the poverty line. The addition of a parent with income also makes a difference—a change in the head of household coincides with 17 to 24 percent of transitions out of poverty.

    And

    Many individuals experience multiple spells of poverty, so that these spell lengths substantially understate the total time spent in poverty. Thirty-six percent of individuals return to poverty within four years of ending a spell. Among households headed by African Americans or single females, rates of re-entry within four years are 46 to 50 percent.

    So, based on this study, saying "poverty" (by which I am indicating being on welfare), is incomplete as there are changes which happen along the way, both positive and negative.

    https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/10/08/stefanie-deluca-crises-force-families-to-move-frequently/

    That is a brief write up a survey which tracked over 17 years of the decisions for why poor people move.

    https://www.urban.org/sites/default...11956-transitioning-in-and-out-of-poverty.pdf

    This one looks a many studies and summarizes them. Among the summaries:

    On average, poor individuals have a one in three chance of escaping poverty in any given year. Blacks, households headed by women, and households with more children have a lower probability of getting out of poverty. Higher education levels improve the likelihood of leaving poverty.

    Roughly half of those who get out of poverty will become poor again within five years. For those who were poor for at least five years and then escaped poverty, more than two-thirds will return to poverty within five years (Stevens 1994). People cycle in and out of poverty over the course of their lives, which can add up to a significant number of years in poverty.

    Most people who become poor do not spend a long time in poverty. Roughly 50 percent of those who become poor get out of poverty a year later; 75 percent experience poverty spells of less than four years. Not surprisingly, the longer a person has been poor, the less likely he or she is to escape poverty.

    So, to this point, three reports indicating the difficulties of getting out of poverty, about the transition between, and how to stay out of poverty. Yet not mention of want to stay in poverty (which, as I mentioned at the top, I'm relation to welfare).

    https://www.mobilitypartnership.org/publications/escaping-poverty

    This one takes a different look, focusing more on why children remain in poverty upon reaching adulthood (working age).

    Here are two interesting points:

    Less than half (48 percent) of persistently poor children have a parent that graduated from high school, far below the national average of 86 percent. A small difference in parental education can be seen between more and less successful young adults.

    Persistently poor children who live with a parent (or other family head/spouse) who has a disability are more likely to struggle as young adults. The most economically successful young adults spent 8 percent of their early adolescence (ages 12–17) in a family with a head or spouse with a disability, while the least successful young adults spent 40 percent.

    Again, hindrances. The second point, I saw multiple times, and I saw how that effected the student's education.

    And here's one from The Atlantic, usually good for a thoughtful take on some subject:

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/10/geographic-mobility-and-housing/542439/

    America used to be a place where moving one’s family and one’s life in search of greater opportunities was common. During the Gold Rush, the Depression, and the postwar expansion West millions of Americans left their hometowns for places where they could earn more and provide a better life for their children. But mobility has fallen in recent years. While 3.6 percent of the population moved to a different state between 1952 and 1953, that number had fallen to 2.7 percent between 1992 and 1993, and to 1.5 percent between 2015 and 2016. (The share of people who move at all, even within the same county, has fallen too, from 20 percent in 1947 to 11.2 percent today.)

    And why does moving matter?

    But over the past 30 years, that regional income convergence has slowed. Economists say that is happening because net migration—the tendency of large numbers of people to move to a specific place—is waning, meaning that the supply of workers isn’t increasing fast enough in the rich areas to bring wages down, and isn’t falling fast enough in the poor areas to bring wages up. Why is this? Why have people stopped moving? The reason, economists believe, is that while there are good wages in economically vibrant cities like New York and San Francisco, housing prices are so high that they outweigh any gains people stand to make in earnings. As a result, high-income cities are still appealing to many workers, but only highly skilled workers who can command salaries high enough to make it worthwhile to move. Low-income workers will end up spending much of their incomes on housing if they move, and so stay put.

    Those were looking at poverty (and in the case of The Atlantic article, poorer people and families), but now a bit on welfare, specifically.

    First, this is from the APA. Granted it is from 1995, and it is long, but there is a consistency.

    Work success for mothers on welfare cannot be accomplished without concomitant services such as quality child care, education and relevant job skills training, available jobs that pay more than welfare and provide family friendly benefits, and support services that promote retention such as transportation, appropriate attire, and encouragement from the home environment (Lerman, 1995). For women, obstacles such as violence from partners and mental and physical health problems must also be addressed.


    Historically, it was believed that mothers, especially if the children were young, should stay home and care for their children. More recently, however, policymakers and citizens have come to believe that the welfare system prevented long-term economic self-sufficiency and that mothers on welfare should be required to participate in work and employment activities rather than stay at home (Wilson, Ellwood, & Brooks-Gunn, 1995). However, the many barriers to successful welfare-to-work transition for poor women are considerable and formidable.

    Yeah, so what is generally known now, as then, is the bolded. But...

    The new welfare law, by contrast, emphasizes a "work first" approach. This approach assumes a lack of personal responsibility as the principal cause of poverty and unemployment among welfare mothers, which disregards the very real larger economic and social biases at work-many women are poor in part because they are women. The "work first" approach also ignores individual variation; that is, although many welfare recipients will be able to get and maintain paying jobs, others will be so significantly disadvantaged, medically, personally, and/or socially, that they have very little hope of being placed in what most would consider an adequate, paying job (R.K. Weaver & Dickens, 1995). Officials in Oregon, which has had one of the nation's sharpest caseload declines (50 percent in 3 years), estimate that 75 percent of those left on the rolls suffer from mental health problems that could interfere with a job (DeParle, 1997).

    Now to Brookings. Again, older (from 2002), but let's see if there is any consistency.

    https://www.brookings.edu/research/from-welfare-to-work-what-the-evidence-shows/

    As the previous article from the APA, this one also looks at the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. And while, specifically looking at women, it seemed to be largely successful, it was not entirely.

    Two of the most important reforms in the 1996 legislation were the imposition of federal time limits on the length of welfare receipt, and the use of more stringent sanctions for not complying with work requirements and other rules. A natural question is how women who hit a time limit or were sanctioned have fared relative to women who left welfare voluntarily or because of different inducements. Time limits have had relatively little effect so far because most states have retained the five-year federal maximum and, as a result large numbers of recipients did not begin to hit time limits until the late fall of 2001. Some states do have shorter time limits than five years, but they have exempted large numbers of families from those limits and have granted large numbers of extensions. These exemptions and extensions have typically been granted to the most disadvantaged families, so that it is primarily those with significant employment and earnings (while on TANF) who hit the time limit in these few states. As a consequence, in the one or two states where significant numbers of families have left welfare because they hit a time limit, post-welfare employment rates of those leavers are quite high (e.g., 80 percent). But in other states where fewer families have hit the limit, employment rates of time-limited leavers are no different than those of other leavers.

    Though this is from 2002, it is interesting that removing one from welfare caused a drop in employment (and as noted above, would increase poverty). Further on down the article, it makes a point that:

    The flip side of the high employment rates of 60 to 75 percent of women who have left welfare is that 25 to 40 percent of those women are not working. Indeed, some studies have indicated that as many as 18 percent of leavers in some areas did not work at all for a full year after leaving the rolls.

    This group is of some concern. Because they have lost their welfare benefits and do not have earnings, they have lower incomes than non-working women who are still on TANF. A fraction of these non-working leavers have a relative, spouse, or partner who brings some income to the household, and others supplement their income with benefits from other government programs.

    Here is one from Salon, looking at the same reform, yet finding long term success as not substantial.

    https://www.salon.com/2018/01/26/wo...re-are-better-ways-to-get-people-off-welfare/

    I'll let everybody read it in it's entirety as a single paragraph doesn't tell enough of a story.

    The bottom line here is that welfare seems to have positive benefits, and that being on welfare allows a majority of those on welfare to have better overall outcomes. Remove welfare, and what I have posted above indicate that it causes an increase in sustained poverty. So, it suggest that most people who want to remain on welfare are not necessarily "lazy" or don't want to work. Invariably, there are those who do fit that stereotype, but a majority do not.

    But the issue is that, while it seems that being on welfare is beneficial, it, alone, does not keep people out of poverty. As hinted at in the above set of articles, all kinds of issues keep people in poverty, such as poor housing, health issues, medical needs of a parent/elder family member in the house, mental health issues, lack of education, etc. One thing, though, which was not mentioned was the issue with incarceration, which typically leads to lower employment, lower wages, and ultimately, high recidivism. All of these issues, and more, need to be looked at in terms of getting people out of poverty (and away from the need for welfare).
     
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