Political Roundtable Part XXVIII

[dobrojim]

re taking the senate

Abrams was on Lawrence O'Donnell last night and, take this for what it's worth
but she's saying the dems could well take both GA seats. So her word and
couple of bucks gets you a cup of coffee but she cited the strength
of their registration drives which could be hard to pick up in polling.

There are plenty of GOP incumbents that would be well worth
massively celebrating if they lose. Obviously McConnell,
Collins, McSally but I'd love to see Cornyn go down since
he's number 2 after McConnell so that would be extra sweet.
Not counting chickens yet. Rather be pleasantly surprised
than sadly disappointed.

[DCZards]

Pelosi's fine but she's no hero. Warren's a hero because she has convictions. AOC too. they're issue-driven, and not re-election driven. Pelosi's loyalties definitely prioritize the party over the people.

but my opinion could be being colored by her acting very much the boomer re: the Squad.

Pelosi is one of the best at counting votes and cajoling and actually getting legislation through... you know, making progress

You need someone like her to help someone like Warren move forward. It is about conviction AND making progress.

BTW, I think AOC is taking serious strides forward as a politician - and (without fact) I think Pelosi has had a hand in that.

If Zonk is right and we take the senate - we need someone like Warren to have a plan and someone like Pelosi to drive the votes. And then Biden just needs to give the two cover to get things done.

BTW, do we know if Warren is good with the nuclear option (that Sanders wasn't up for)?

Pelosi is a very polished politician/leader, who should not be underestimated. She regularly gets challenged from within for his position as head of the Dems in the House, but she always easily prevails.

I think you're right about Pelosi helping to make AOC a better leader and even more of a rising star within the party. Pelosi gives AOC the room she needs to lead the charge on behalf of progressives, but I'm sure Nancy quietly reins her in when it's appropriate.

And given her position within the Dem party, there may very well be times when Pelosi has to put the party over the people.

[Zonkerbl]

Pelosi is the Lindsay Graham of the right. When she's able to she does the right thing, but a lot of times the demands of her position force her to make some crappy choices.

Lindsay Graham's crappy choices have a good chance of destroying Democracy though. Pelosi is making her crappy choices trying to save Democracy.

[bsilver]

Pelosi is the Lindsay Graham of the right. When she's able to she does the right thing, but a lot of times the demands of her position force her to make some crappy choices.

Lindsay Graham's crappy choices have a good chance of destroying Democracy though. Pelosi is making her crappy choices trying to save Democracy.

One can criticize Pelosi's stand on issues, but she's a leader who sticks to her principles. Graham has principles, but puts his finger in the air to see if it's safe, otherwise kowtows to Trump.

[badinage]

The general idea for schools is they all should get the same per capita funding or you create an incentive for wealthy people to create little wealthy enclaves where their kids get better education than everyone else, which preserves their social status and serves as a barrier to entry to poorer people, helping them maintain their monopoly power over access to education and finances.

Anything that serves to disrupt attempts to keep access to education equal is basically a tool for wealthy people to put up barriers to opportunity for the poors and as such should be discouraged. Magnet and charter schools and what have you suck resources out of the public school system, and generally it is the highly motivated relatively wealthy families that finagle their way into those options, leaving poor kids stuck in the schools that have had resources sucked away from them.

I feel bad writing this because I finagled the heck out of this system to make sure my kids were in magnet schools from middle school through high school. I'm glad the options were available but yeah - there were no black kids in those programs.

This actually makes you like a lot of white liberals I know. (And fwiw, I’m on the left.) Play the angles, work the system, lament what you’re doing ... and console yourself with the belief that well, we all want and will do what is best for our children. I like what you say about putting an end to the practice of using property taxes to fund schools. And I would like to think this would go some ways to bringing about systemic change. I just have never really understood how people — I’m not referring to you; I have enjoyed your posts on this thread and others here; I’m talking in the broad sense — can call themselves a liberal if they’re working the system in order to gain, especially if they know the consequences that has on people who are poorer and less fortunate. (And aren’t liberals meant to be aware of the implications of their individual actions?).

And yet I know so many people who have done just that. So many people. A friend of mine lives in [affluent white neighborhood in Maryland.]. Used to live in [mixed race urban neighborhood in DC]. Why did he and his wife move? “The schools.” Uh huh. An old story. Provides great protective cover. The schools. The schools that are not full of blacks and browns. Meanwhile, he and his wife stump with a preacher’s moral fervor these days about wokeness and how cancel culture is a welcome antidote.

[DCZards]

This actually makes you like a lot of white liberals I know. (And fwiw, I’m on the left.) Play the angles, work the system, lament what you’re doing ... and console yourself with the belief that well, we all want and will do what is best for our children. I like what you say about putting an end to the practice of using property taxes to fund schools. And I would like to think this would go some ways to bringing about systemic change. I just have never really understood how people — I’m not referring to you; I have enjoyed your posts on this thread and others here; I’m talking in the broad sense — can call themselves a liberal if they’re working the system in order to gain, especially if they know the consequences that has on people who are poorer and less fortunate. (And aren’t liberals meant to be aware of the implications of their individual actions?).

And yet I know so many people who have done just that. So many people. A friend of mine lives in [affluent white neighborhood in Maryland.]. Used to live in [mixed race urban neighborhood in DC]. Why did he and his wife move? “The schools.” Uh huh. An old story. Provides great protective cover. The schools. The schools that are not full of blacks and browns. Meanwhile, he and his wife stump with a preacher’s moral fervor these days about wokeness and how cancel culture is a welcome antidote.

You’re being unfairly harsh on Zonk (and other liberals) for an important decision he made on behalf of his children.

I’m Black and my two children went to DC public schools that were at least 95% Black. But my wife and I made a conscious (and I believe smart) decision to seek out and enroll our kids in the best DC schools—elementary through high school. None of these schools were our neighborhood school.

I’m proud of the fact that my kids were able to get a good education without us having to leave DC or go the private school route. But I don’t begrudge those parents who decide to move to neighborhoods or towns with “better schools.” They should do what they consider best for their children. Just as I did what’s best for mine. And I don’t think the decision to send your kid to a “better school” always comes down to avoiding schools with Black and brown kids, because there are good schools everywhere, including in the Md. and Va. suburbs, with large numbers of Black and brown kids.

No one should have to sacrifice their children in order to prove their “liberal/progressive cred.” Sending your kids to a "better school" doesn't prevent you from caring deeply about the education of Black and brown kids or stop you from working to improve inferior schools.

[Zonkerbl]

The general idea for schools is they all should get the same per capita funding or you create an incentive for wealthy people to create little wealthy enclaves where their kids get better education than everyone else, which preserves their social status and serves as a barrier to entry to poorer people, helping them maintain their monopoly power over access to education and finances.

Anything that serves to disrupt attempts to keep access to education equal is basically a tool for wealthy people to put up barriers to opportunity for the poors and as such should be discouraged. Magnet and charter schools and what have you suck resources out of the public school system, and generally it is the highly motivated relatively wealthy families that finagle their way into those options, leaving poor kids stuck in the schools that have had resources sucked away from them.

I feel bad writing this because I finagled the heck out of this system to make sure my kids were in magnet schools from middle school through high school. I'm glad the options were available but yeah - there were no black kids in those programs.

This actually makes you like a lot of white liberals I know. (And fwiw, I’m on the left.) Play the angles, work the system, lament what you’re doing ... and console yourself with the belief that well, we all want and will do what is best for our children. I like what you say about putting an end to the practice of using property taxes to fund schools. And I would like to think this would go some ways to bringing about systemic change. I just have never really understood how people — I’m not referring to you; I have enjoyed your posts on this thread and others here; I’m talking in the broad sense — can call themselves a liberal if they’re working the system in order to gain, especially if they know the consequences that has on people who are poorer and less fortunate. (And aren’t liberals meant to be aware of the implications of their individual actions?).

And yet I know so many people who have done just that. So many people. A friend of mine lives in [affluent white neighborhood in Maryland.]. Used to live in [mixed race urban neighborhood in DC]. Why did he and his wife move? “The schools.” Uh huh. An old story. Provides great protective cover. The schools. The schools that are not full of blacks and browns. Meanwhile, he and his wife stump with a preacher’s moral fervor these days about wokeness and how cancel culture is a welcome antidote.

Well, let me be absolutely clear - I have never claimed that I am not racist. My mom was a bra burning radical feminist in the seventies, who grew up in the Bronx and is absolutely convinced that the decline in the inner cities she observed as a teenager in the fifties was due to the influx of black people, and she raised me racist as hell in racist as hell southwest Ohio.

I'm learning as I go. After having lived through the experience of gaming the system to get my kids better education than black kids do, yeah now I realize it's part of institutionalized racism. My whole life is me taking advantage of opportunities that my black neighbors didn't have. I was raised with an ingrained belief, learned from my parents and cop shows on tv, that denying opportunities to black people is ok, because they are bad people who trash neighborhoods when they move into them. The talky part of my brain tries to convince the lizard part of my brain that this is wrong and sometimes the talky part wins but a lot of times the talky part isn't even aware of what's going on.

You're absolutely right that I am a prime example of a racist liberal. I've never claimed otherwise. When I moved to Anacostia and I drove my mom to our new house to look at it, and she looked at the black people in Old Anacostia and was like, well for this neighborhood to improve, THOSE PEOPLE have to go. That's when it really hit me - damn, liberals can be racist. That wasn't that long ago, to be honest. I'm starting to hear things I glossed over before - When I tell coworkers I live in Anacostia, they always blurt out "Is it safe?" People who have never been to Anacostia, I'm pretty sure. They don't say that about H st, which I know for a fact is more dangerous than Anacostia.

You raise an interesting point - knowing what I know now, would I still take advantage of opportunities that institutionalized racism gives me? I mean, the whole system is a white supremacist system. The loans I get for my house, the education system for my kids, the education opportunities I got as a kid, the job opportunities I get now... I mean, if I wanted to make a principled stand and stop taking advantage of opportunities I get as a white person, where would it stop? Should I pick some opportunities to turn down out of principle but not others? Should I live as a hermit, abandoning my family? My job right now is to use my Ph.D. economics training to try to figure out how to eliminate poverty in low income countries - should I quit that job? What if I discover a way to reform corrupt governments that lifts billions of people out of poverty around the world? Should I quit trying to do that to make a point about institutionalized racism?

I don't know. I grew up in dirt poor southwest Ohio and I'm always going to game the crap out of the system to get ahead as much as I can, that's just who I am. That's how I got out of that little town.

[pancakes3]

lol, badinage, do you really "not understand" or are you just being sh*tty? seems pretty darn obvious that "no one should have to sacrifice their children in order to prove their "liberal/progressive cred" just like conservatives are no less a republican if they stand against trump, racism, or believe in climate change. you don't have to be a snide, score-keeping both-sideser to prove your republican cred either.

[Zonkerbl]

I do think that people pay way more than they should to live in neighborhoods with "good schools." Quality of education is hard to measure and people use the non-blackness or the wealth of the neighborhood as a proxy. Wheaton (the neighborhood I lived in while I was raising my kids) has a lot of middle class second generation immigrant families in it - it's more a "this neighborhood has no black people" thing than a "this neighborhood has lots of white people" thing.

Can't help but notice that Anacostia is where they try to put all the services for poor people, because that's where all the poor people are, and, well, good, but it also crowds out important services like grocery stores. I'm still mad about how the grocery store that was literally 3 blocks away from my house shut down, and they put a kidney dialysis center there instead. WTF people. Those are decisions the DC government is explicitly making at the urging of their constituents. Can't help but notice that every attempt to create job opportunities in Anacostia is shouted down as gentrification. And I get it, because once a neighborhood starts to do well the property prices and rents jump up and all the poor people have to move out. But preventing all job opportunities from entering your neighborhood isn't going to get rid of poverty either. IMHO a good anti-gentrification policy is to be mindful about the pace of change you allow, making sure that you have programs in place for people who are going to face higher rents. Maybe not rent control, but affordable housing. Maybe you don't bulldoze down an entire neighborhood and build a bunch of restaurants for white people and tell all the poor people living there to eff off, like happened on H st. But Anacostia's "keep out all job creating investment to prevent gentrification" policy isn't doing the poor people here any favors either. They've improved a little since Marion Barry died, I think he was the biggest advocate of that strategy. We've got a Busboys and Poets now (although I've never been). They're finally putting some businesses in the abandoned storefronts on Old Hope Road that have been empty since I moved here in 2011.

[pancakes3]

trump must be reading this thread bc he just issued some racist statement saying that fair housing laws are tanking real estate prices and increasing crime, which was was somehow perfectly acceptable coded language in the 80's and into the 90's.

[pancakes3]

secret police black-bagging protesters in portland. cool cool cool. @Nate, @Popper.

anticipated response: fake news -> not a big deal it was like 4 ppl -> they're violent antifa and deserve it -> wait for it to phase out of the news cycle and forget about it.

there are still kids being separated and being kept in cages despite (1) judges ordering them to stop, and (2) it not being "official" policy any more.

trump brags about building 200 miles of wall in the past 2 years, 198 miles of which is just renovating existing wall. those are repairs on average of 2 miles of wall per week, or about a foot a minute.

[DCZards]

trump must be reading this thread bc he just issued some racist statement saying that fair housing laws are tanking real estate prices and increasing crime, which was was somehow perfectly acceptable coded language in the 80's and into the 90's.

When I heard those remarks from Trump yesterday I thought I was listening to George Wallace. WTF! Is this really happening in 2020?

[pancakes3]

HUD Secretary Ben Carson — who had already effectively delayed enforcement of the AFFH rule by five years — in January unveiled a proposal to water it down by redefining the way jurisdictions are required to promote fair housing and scrapping a key assessment tool used to map patterns of segregation.

The 2015 rule — which the Obama administration introduced to bolster enforcement of the landmark Fair Housing Act of 1968 — required local governments to track patterns of poverty and segregation with a checklist of 92 questions in order to gain access to federal housing funds.

“Since the issuance of the 2015 final rule, HUD has determined that the current regulations are overly burdensome to both HUD and grantees and are ineffective in helping program participants meet their reporting obligations,” the agency said when it rolled out the revision in January.

The proposed revision came on the heels of another significant rollback: HUD last August proposed revamping a groundbreaking 2013 "disparate impact" rule to make it harder to prove unintentional discrimination and give defendants more leeway to rebut the claims.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, meanwhile, has proposed cutting back on collecting data that helps track discrimination in the mortgage market. The agency has filed fewer anti-discrimination enforcement actions under the two directors installed by Trump.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/01/trump-hud-fair-housing-rule-346996

if market prices reflect the public's willingness to pay a premium to keep black people out of their neighborhood, then yeah, that's a market correction that needs to be in place and it's the government's job to make sure discrimination like this doesn't happen.

nothing in the regulations reference poverty, only race, so to conflate the two issues is by definition, racist. plus, it's not like the regs are forcing owners to sell to black people at lower prices. the entire thing is just nonsense.

[pancakes3]

it's easy to tell people to quit their jobs but it's really hard to quit your job

https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-staffers-erupt-over-tucker-carlsons-racism-say-bosses-created-a-white-supremacist-cell?ref=home

[bsilver]

HUD Secretary Ben Carson — who had already effectively delayed enforcement of the AFFH rule by five years — in January unveiled a proposal to water it down by redefining the way jurisdictions are required to promote fair housing and scrapping a key assessment tool used to map patterns of segregation.

The 2015 rule — which the Obama administration introduced to bolster enforcement of the landmark Fair Housing Act of 1968 — required local governments to track patterns of poverty and segregation with a checklist of 92 questions in order to gain access to federal housing funds.

“Since the issuance of the 2015 final rule, HUD has determined that the current regulations are overly burdensome to both HUD and grantees and are ineffective in helping program participants meet their reporting obligations,” the agency said when it rolled out the revision in January.

The proposed revision came on the heels of another significant rollback: HUD last August proposed revamping a groundbreaking 2013 "disparate impact" rule to make it harder to prove unintentional discrimination and give defendants more leeway to rebut the claims.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, meanwhile, has proposed cutting back on collecting data that helps track discrimination in the mortgage market. The agency has filed fewer anti-discrimination enforcement actions under the two directors installed by Trump.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/01/trump-hud-fair-housing-rule-346996

if market prices reflect the public's willingness to pay a premium to keep black people out of their neighborhood, then yeah, that's a market correction that needs to be in place and it's the government's job to make sure discrimination like this doesn't happen.

nothing in the regulations reference poverty, only race, so to conflate the two issues is by definition, racist. plus, it's not like the regs are forcing owners to sell to black people at lower prices. the entire thing is just nonsense.

Ben Carson's HUD is a disaster for the US. Housing policies have been one of the main causes of the dire economic straights experienced by many African Americans. The have been denied the opportunity to live in middle class neighborhoods with good schools, because of racism, further enabled by government policies. The Obama administration was trying to rectify the problem, but we're now going backwards.

This gives me the opportunity to brag about my son, an author of this article, and a constant foe of Carson. He's a fair housing attorney with The Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights.
https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/484526-hud-has-become-an-obstacle-to-fair-housing

[bsilver]

Every time there's a Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the hospital story, or experiencing another bout of cancer, I get a really sinking feeling. She's one of the few people in public life I feel real affection towards. Obama is another.

If she can't continue, and Trump/McConnell push through another republican justice, then the only option is to pack the court, assuming Biden wins and democrats control the senate. Chief Justice Roberts may have been trying to forestall this from happening with some recent decisions, but giving Trump another pick totally changes the situation. Every decision would now go the way of a conservative court.

But, I don't know if Biden has the balls to change the court. Nothing he's done in the past leads to any optimism. There would have to be enough public uproar to push him in the right direction.

[montestewart]

Every time there's a Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the hospital story, or experiencing another bout of cancer, I get a really sinking feeling. She's one of the few people in public life I feel real affection towards. Obama is another.

If she can't continue, and Trump/McConnell push through another republican justice, then the only option is to pack the court, assuming Biden wins and democrats control the senate. Chief Justice Roberts may have been trying to forestall this from happening with some recent decisions, but giving Trump another pick totally changes the situation. Every decision would now go the way of a conservative court.

But, I don't know if Biden has the balls to change the court. Nothing he's done in the past leads to any optimism. There would have to be enough public uproar to push him in the right direction.

Alito and Thomas are in their 70s themselves, so maybe they don't last through a Democratic run. Regardless, maybe Ginsburg and Breyer should have thought about retiring under Obama, with adequate time to replace them. Next round of Democratically appointed jutices should be nice and young, sticking around a long time.

And maybe next time, can they try to find someone who didn't go to Harvard or Yale? I think we can all agree that usually only about half of the Harvard and Yale trained justices are right on any given important issue.

[bsilver]

"Former Miss Kentucky sends topless photos to 15 year old student"
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/17/us/miss-kentucky-ramsey-bearse-trnd/index.html
Have to admit, clicked on this story because of "Miss Kentucky" and "topless", but does anyone think this warrants two years in prison? Six months, suspended sentence sounds about right.

Also, have to admit my opinion is sexist, but does that make it "wrong"? A male teacher doing the same seems worse.

[montestewart]

"Former Miss Kentucky sends topless photos to 15 year old student"
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/17/us/miss-kentucky-ramsey-bearse-trnd/index.html
Have to admit, clicked on this story because of "Miss Kentucky" and "topless", but does anyone think this warrants two years in prison? Six months, suspended sentence sounds about right.

Also, have to admit my opinion is sexist, but does that make it "wrong"? A male teacher doing the same seems worse.

Does seem harsh for merely topless photos, but the fact that she was a teacher and he was a student may have had something to do with it.

That males as a group are more sexually predatory than females is demonstrated statistically, but we don't really need statistics to show what we already know. For most girls, such an experience with a teacher might lead to a lifetime of nightmares, while for many boys, the same experience might be a dream come true. Regardless, such adult-child interactions are generally viewed as manipulation and violation of trust. The rules vary by context, state, culture, etc. but it's usually frowned upon to some degree.

I don't get quite as hysterical as some people do about adult-child interactions, not because I approve, but because I believe such interactions far more prevalent than many other people believe (or pretend to believe), and that it always has been. There are a lot of people scarred by such abusive behavior, and if we really hanged everyone who was in some way guilty, there would be a lot of bodies to dispose of.

The thing I don't get, however, is why child sexual abuse is so prevalent (among teachers, coaches, older adult relatives, etc.) in so many cultures. It doesn't seem like it's that hard of a rule to follow.

[Ruzious]

How does stuff like this happen in the US in 2020?

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