[Winstonm]

ldrews, on 2017-February-22, 10:32, said:

Thank you for some substance!

And yet Tillerson, Mattis, McMasters, Mnuchin, Sessions, are all strong, independent leaders. Many of them have effectively managed large organizations, do not seem to be afraid of confronting/disagreeing with Trump. This does not seem to me to be the mark of an insecure, myopic president.

You may disagree with his worldview, with his politics, etc., but that does not make him dangerous in a general sense. To me dangerous would be getting us into a nuclear war with Russia, or allowing terrorists/jihadists with nuclear/biological weapons to enter the US. Most everything else we can and will deal with.

Steve Bannon is dangerous to you because you don't agree with his worldview. They probably think the same of you. And as distorted as Alex Jones, Breitbart, et al may be, Fox, CNN, and MSNBC are not far behind. Bias and selective reporting seem to be rampant everywhere I look. To say that this ***** is less shitty than that ***** seems a meaningless distinction to me.

But if you want to run away from a contrary viewpoint/opinion, I certainly can't stop you. But I would like to hear more of your reasoning and not just your invective.

Why are Steve Bannon, the Gorka pair, Steve Miller, General Flynn dangerous? Please give me some explicit details.

Your game has grown wearisome. I decline. Goodbye.

[ldrews]

Winstonm, on 2017-February-22, 15:33, said:

Your game has grown wearisome. I decline. Goodbye.

OK, goodbye.

But before you go, let me ask you: Does Tulsa have any inner city crime problems? That is a topic I would like to see discussed: solutions to the plight of inner cities.

[mike777]

ldrews, on 2017-February-22, 16:09, said:

OK, goodbye.

But before you go, let me ask you: Does Tulsa have any inner city crime problems? That is a topic I would like to see discussed: solutions to the plight of inner cities.

Part of the problem is folks at times find the solutions worse.

For example my old hometown is Chicago.

One problem were the slum towers such as Cabrina Green and the Taylor homes. The solution was to tear them down and sell the land to whomever. These towers were close to downtown, yuppies came in, built townhomes, etc, pay taxes. built a community, many hated the solution.


People don't like that one possible answer is what is happening to Detroit. The city in many ways was destroyed and is in the process of being replaced by something else. People, voters rise up and demand that govt step in and stop the destruction, stop the replacing....

[kenberg]

ldrews, on 2017-February-22, 16:09, said:

OK, goodbye.

But before you go, let me ask you: Does Tulsa have any inner city crime problems? That is a topic I would like to see discussed: solutions to the plight of inner cities.

Inner cities. A few comments, and although the first is joking, I can't resist. Since 1967 I have lived near Washington D.C.
The U.S. Capitol is where NW, NE, SW, and SE all come together, so I guess that's about as inner as you can get. Make what you will of it.

I grew up in St. Paul in the middle of the last century. "Inner city" would have had no meaning for me. But then, in the early 1960s, I went to a math conference at the University of Chicago. I stayed downtown and took the el to the U of C. Whew! A couple of years after that I read Gordon Parks' autobiographical "A Choice of Weapons", relating his growing up in the area that the el passed through. Whew again. If nothing else, I realized that there was a lot out there that I did not, probably could not, really comprehend.

Nobody should have to grow up in these conditions. That is not at all saying that I have the solution. But it also is not saying that I have no thoughts. I simply recognize that in this area I might not much know what I am talking about.

Back to D.C.: A granddaughter now lives comfortably in an area that I would never have visited in earlier times. Whether this very local improvement is actually a solution or whether it simply moved a problem elsewhere is a good question.

[Cyberyeti]

ldrews, on 2017-February-22, 10:32, said:

Why are Steve Bannon, the Gorka pair, Steve Miller, General Flynn dangerous? Please give me some explicit details.

OK Bannon.

Long rap sheet for anti-semitism, comparing planned parenthood to the holocaust, alleged domestic violence, should be nowhere near power.

[ldrews]

Cyberyeti, on 2017-February-22, 16:59, said:

OK Bannon.

Long rap sheet for anti-semitism, comparing planned parenthood to the holocaust, alleged domestic violence, should be nowhere near power.

OK, thanks for the input.

So, Bannon is an anti-semite. Trump's son-in-law and daughter are Jewish. Trump just, finally, came out with a denunciation of anti-semitism. So apparently Bannon is not having much effect there.

While I disagree with Bannon on Planned Parenthood, I sort of understand where he is coming from. But to me it is irrelevant. Although I like and approve of Planned Parenthood I don't think the Federal Government has any business funding it. Protect it yes, fund it no.

Alleged domestic violence is just that, alleged, not proven, and therefore should be ignored for the purposes of this conversation. Anyone can allege anything about anyone.

So unless you think Trump is a mindless idiot (oops, I forgot where I am) I would assert that the danger from Bannon is minimal. Watch him, but don't get your knickers in a wad.

[ldrews]

mike777, on 2017-February-22, 16:40, said:

Part of the problem is folks at times find the solutions worse.

For example my old hometown is Chicago.

One problem were the slum towers such as Cabrina Green and the Taylor homes. The solution was to tear them down and sell the land to whomever. These towers were close to downtown, yuppies came in, built townhomes, etc, pay taxes. built a community, many hated the solution.


People don't like that one possible answer is what is happening to Detroit. The city in many ways was destroyed and is in the process of being replaced by something else. People, voters rise up and demand that govt step in and stop the destruction, stop the replacing....

Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

I had some thoughts about the problem. I tend to think about how to give people incentives to clean up their own situation.

How about this: Arrange for the VA to give 10 year 0% interest mortgages to vets who will buy and live in a home in the target areas.

This would do several things:

• Reward veterans for their service to the country
  
• Place trained, competent individuals into the target areas where they have significan incentives to clean up the mess.
  
• Provide better role models for the youth in the area

My thought is that the vets, who would now have a strong vested interest in their neighborhood, would not put up with much crap and over a period of a few years would clean up and stabilize the community.

What do you think?

[Cyberyeti]

ldrews, on 2017-February-22, 17:50, said:

OK, thanks for the input.

So, Bannon is an anti-semite. Trump's son-in-law and daughter are Jewish. Trump just, finally, came out with a denunciation of anti-semitism. So apparently Bannon is not having much effect there.

While I disagree with Bannon on Planned Parenthood, I sort of understand where he is coming from. But to me it is irrelevant. Although I like and approve of Planned Parenthood I don't think the Federal Government has any business funding it. Protect it yes, fund it no.

Alleged domestic violence is just that, alleged, not proven, and therefore should be ignored for the purposes of this conversation. Anyone can allege anything about anyone.

So unless you think Trump is a mindless idiot (oops, I forgot where I am) I would assert that the danger from Bannon is minimal. Watch him, but don't get your knickers in a wad.

I used him as an example because he's the one I know most about but when most of your choices are welcomed enthusiastically by the KKK, you're probably doing something wrong.

[mike777]

ldrews, on 2017-February-22, 17:59, said:

Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

I had some thoughts about the problem. I tend to think about how to give people incentives to clean up their own situation.

How about this: Arrange for the VA to give 10 year 0% interest mortgages to vets who will buy and live in a home in the target areas.

This would do several things:

• Reward veterans for their service to the country
  
• Place trained, competent individuals into the target areas where they have significan incentives to clean up the mess.
  
• Provide better role models for the youth in the area

My thought is that the vets, who would now have a strong vested interest in their neighborhood, would not put up with much crap and over a period of a few years would clean up and stabilize the community.

What do you think?

I understand your thought process as far as it goes.
a few issues:

1) Vets have their own problems just as we all do. Most VETS are great some not so good.
2) Why would that many vets who have options in their lives do this...a tiny few out of the goodness of their heart perhaps but a tiny few. Do you end up with vets who cannot afford to live anywhere else?
3) Do you want the government pounding on their door and kicking them out into the street with their kids when they fail to pay the mortgage? Or will the government simply say we forgive your debt....and let the taxpayers eat it?
4) Also you assume thevet and their families will buy the house and live in the house...perhaps they will buy, move in for a month and then rent it out?

[ldrews]

mike777, on 2017-February-22, 20:28, said:

I understand your thought process as far as it goes.
a few issues:

1) Vets have their own problems just as we all do. Most VETS are great some not so good.
2) Why would that many vets who have options in their lives do this...a tiny few out of the goodness of their heart perhaps but a tiny few. Do you end up with vets who cannot afford to live anywhere else?
3) Do you want the government pounding on their door and kicking them out into the street with their kids when they fail to pay the mortgage? Or will the government simply say we forgive your debt....and let the taxpayers eat it?

Thank you for your thoughts.

You are right, some VETS would not do well. Perhaps some further qualification would be required. Although for the goal intended some failures are acceptable.

The financial incentives are significant. A 0% mortgage is like living rent free. And if the house and neighborhood are improved during the 10 year period, the VET would realize substantial capital gains.
For example say the VET acquired a house in Chicago South Side for $50,000. The VET and family live rent free, except for property taxes and insurance, for 10 years. If the VET simply maintains the house but helps improve the neighborhood, the VET would easily realize $50,000 capital gain after 10 years. Refinancing the expiring mortgage would be easy.

After 10 years when the mortgage expires the VA would use normal foreclosure procedures. The VET would have to be brain dead to let that happen. Refinancing after 10 years should be fairly easy. But if necessary the VA forecloses and sells the house on the open market to recoup the original mortgage amount.

This is not a free ride. The VET has the incentive and the VA has the expectation that the VET will maintain/improve the property and the neighborhood. The VET has a very strong incentive to clean up the neighborhood in order to provide a safe life for his/her family and to realize the capital gains at the end of the mortgage.

If 3 or 4 VETS locate in the same neighborhood, I would expect the neighborhood to get cleaned up rather rapidly. And by cleaned up I mean both physically and crime wise.

[mike777]

ldrews, on 2017-February-22, 20:52, said:

Thank you for your thoughts.

You are right, some VETS would not do well. Perhaps some further qualification would be required. Although for the goal intended some failures are acceptable.

The financial incentives are significant. A 0% mortgage is like living rent free. And if the house and neighborhood are improved during the 10 year period, the VET would realize substantial capital gains.
For example say the VET acquired a house in Chicago South Side for $50,000. The VET and family live rent free, except for property taxes and insurance, for 10 years. If the VET simply maintains the house but helps improve the neighborhood, the VET would easily realize $50,000 capital gain after 10 years. Refinancing the expiring mortgage would be easy.

After 10 years when the mortgage expires the VA would use normal foreclosure procedures. The VET would have to be brain dead to let that happen. Refinancing after 10 years should be fairly easy. But if necessary the VA forecloses and sells the house on the open market to recoup the original mortgage amount.

This is not a free ride. The VET has the incentive and the VA has the expectation that the VET will maintain/improve the property and the neighborhood. The VET has a very strong incentive to clean up the neighborhood in order to provide a safe life for his/her family and to realize the capital gains at the end of the mortgage.

If 3 or 4 VETS locate in the same neighborhood, I would expect the neighborhood to get cleaned up rather rapidly. And by cleaned up I mean both physically and crime wise.

After ten years the house is paid off, no mortgage to refinance. there are a lot more taxes on a house than just the ones you list....also upkeep is a big expense in terms of time and money...houses are not cheap...

Way too many assumptions in the rest of your post, not practical..for example making the vet live there for ten years or what? the huge backlash if say after year one...the VA forecloses on the house and kicks the vet out....or what if the vet keeps the house but rents it out......so after working all day...coming home and taking care of the kids you want her the VET to be a leader in the neighborhood...etc etc etc...

[ldrews]

mike777, on 2017-February-23, 08:12, said:

After ten years the house is paid off, no mortgage to refinance. there are a lot more taxes on a house than just the ones you list....also upkeep is a big expense in terms of time and money...houses are not cheap...

Way too many assumptions in the rest of your post, not practical..for example making the vet live there for ten years or what? the huge backlash if say after year one...the VA forecloses on the house and kicks the vet out....or what if the vet keeps the house but rents it out......so after working all day...coming home and taking care of the kids you want her the VET to be a leader in the neighborhood...etc etc etc...

OK, so how would you fix it? Or what is another alternative approach to improving the situation in inner cities. Or do you favor doing nothing?

[barmar]

I've noticed that in a number of interviews with various reporters and policy experts, a common phrase to describe the new National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster is that he "doesn't suffer fools easily". How does anyone expect someone like that to work successfully with his new boss?

[mike777]

ldrews, on 2017-February-23, 08:44, said:

OK, so how would you fix it? Or what is another alternative approach to improving the situation in inner cities. Or do you favor doing nothing?

I gave a partial solution in my previous post. In general a bottom up approach rather than a top down approach. This calls for destruction as I pointed out in Chicago and Detroit and allowing cities or at least vast parts of cities to be allowed to be destroyed and replaced by something or several somethings. This is painful, so painful that people cry out for the government to step in and stop the destruction and replacing, thus the practical problem in this approach. Perhaps the biggest thing a central government can do to help is implement growth policies, grow the economy faster than 1-2%

At the local level:


As a first step in Chicago I have called for in these forums for drastic and radical steps to stop or at least slow the rate of increase in crime.
1) FLOOD THE high crime areas...including my home of Roseland/Pullman on the south side with cops.
2) call up the Nat guard to walk the streets allowing police to do police work.
3) stop and frisk in some form
4) using a gun in a crime not only be a local/state crime but also a federal crime, they can be both, 2 different trials. Mandatory prison time at the federal level, years...
5) go after parole violations, many gang members if they are breathing are in violation of something...

Yes the above is drastic and radical....
----


As for the city of Chicago and at the state level...they are doing a pretty good job at encouraging people to move...move out to Florida...move to NC...move somewhere else...

[mike777]

barmar, on 2017-February-23, 09:56, said:

I've noticed that in a number of interviews with various reporters and policy experts, a common phrase to describe the new National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster is that he "doesn't suffer fools easily". How does anyone expect someone like that to work successfully with his new boss?

Have you read his book....came out back in 97..it may answer your questions.

[kenberg]

It is impossible to overstate my rejection of the vets/inner cities idea. I very much support doing a great deal more for vets, in particular far more attention to their physical and psychological needs. But not in this manner. Use financial incentive to try to get them to buy a house in a neighborhood I would not even wish to walk through? No. Absolutely no. They are not trained for such a role, there is no reason they should want or be good at such a role. I think it is an awful idea. Exactly what we do and do not owe our vets can be thought through, but this isn't it.

As to what to do about the bad areas of the cities. Starting point: Recognize that this problem affects us all. Then recognize that there is no complete solution. There will always be young men and young women who make awful choices, awful for themselves and for everyone around them. Still. It is beyond tolerance that children still grow up ingesting lead based paint or drinking unsafe water. There is only so much we can do for someone with a damaged brain. Of course it is not just lead, that's just in the news. Children need, to whatever extent it an be provided, security, nutrition, stability, education and some reason to believe that they can make their lives better. We cannot perform miracles, but surely we can do better. .

[y66]

From Dismal Results From Vouchers Surprise Researchers as DeVos Era Begins (Feb 23, 2017) by Kevin Carey NYT:

Quote

The confirmation of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education was a signal moment for the school choice movement. For the first time, the nation’s highest education official is someone fully committed to making school vouchers and other market-oriented policies the centerpiece of education reform.

But even as school choice is poised to go national, a wave of new research has emerged suggesting that private school vouchers may harm students who receive them. The results are startling — the worst in the history of the field, researchers say.

...The first results came in late 2015. Researchers examined an Indiana voucher program that had quickly grown to serve tens of thousands of students under Mike Pence, then the state’s governor. “In mathematics,” they found, “voucher students who transfer to private schools experienced significant losses in achievement.” They also saw no improvement in reading.

The next results came a few months later, in February, when researchers published a major study of Louisiana’s voucher program. Students in the program were predominantly black and from low-income families, and they came from public schools that had received poor ratings from the state department of education, based on test scores. For private schools receiving more applicants than they could enroll, the law required that they admit students via lottery, which allowed the researchers to compare lottery winners with those who stayed in public school.

They found large negative results in both reading and math. Public elementary school students who started at the 50th percentile in math and then used a voucher to transfer to a private school dropped to the 26th percentile in a single year. Results were somewhat better in the second year, but were still well below the starting point.

This is very unusual. When people try to improve education, sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. The successes usually register as modest improvements, while the failures generally have no effect at all. It’s rare to see efforts to improve test scores having the opposite result. Martin West, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, calls the negative effects in Louisiana “as large as any I’ve seen in the literature” — not just compared with other voucher studies, but in the history of American education research.

There’s always the chance that a single study, no matter how well designed, is an outlier. Studies of older voucher programs in Milwaukee and elsewhere have generally produced mixed results, sometimes finding modest improvements in test scores, but only for some subjects and student groups. Until about a year ago, however, few if any studies had shown vouchers causing test scores to decline drastically.

In June, a third voucher study was released by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank and proponent of school choice. The study, which was financed by the pro-voucher Walton Family Foundation, focused on a large voucher program in Ohio. “Students who use vouchers to attend private schools have fared worse academically compared to their closely matched peers attending public schools,” the researchers found. Once again, results were worse in math.

Three consecutive reports, each studying one of the largest new state voucher programs, found that vouchers hurt student learning. Researchers and advocates began a spirited debate about what, exactly, was going on.

Mark Dynarski of the Brookings Institution noted that the performance gap between private and public school students had narrowed significantly over time. He argued that the standards, testing and accountability movement, for all its political shortcomings, was effective. The assumed superiority of private schools may no longer hold.

Some voucher supporters observed that many private schools in Louisiana chose not to accept voucher students, and those that did had recently experienced declining enrollment. Perhaps the participating schools were unusually bad and eager for revenue. But this is another way of saying that exposing young children to the vagaries of private-sector competition is inherently risky. The free market often does a terrible job of providing basic services to the poor — see, for instance, the lack of grocery stores and banks in many low-income neighborhoods. This may also hold for education.

Others have argued that standardized test scores are the wrong measure of school success. It’s true that voucher programs in Washington and some others elsewhere, which produced no improvements in test scores, increased the likelihood of students’ advancement and graduation from high school. One study of a privately financed voucher program in New York found positive results for college attendance among African-Americans.

But research has also linked higher test scores to a host of positive outcomes later in life. And voucher advocates often cite poor test scores in public schools to justify creating private school vouchers in the first place.

The new voucher studies stand in marked contrast to research findings that well-regulated charter schools in Massachusetts and elsewhere have a strong, positive impact on test scores. But while vouchers and charters are often grouped under the umbrella of “school choice,” the best charters tend to be nonprofit public schools, open to all and accountable to public authorities. The less “private” that school choice programs are, the better they seem to work.

The new evidence on vouchers does not seem to have deterred the Trump administration, which has proposed a new $20 billion voucher program. Secretary DeVos’s enthusiasm for vouchers, which have been the primary focus of her philanthropic spending and advocacy, appears to be undiminished.

[mike777]

y66, on 2017-February-23, 12:25, said:

From Dismal Results From Vouchers Surprise Researchers as DeVos Era Begins (Feb 23, 2017) by Kevin Carey NYT:

Another example of shoddy journalism. What a joke of an article. It does ok on the reporting of the studies, the rest is a real piece of crap.

So many places of crap but lets start with the main one this guy has no idea how markets work or how public education is paid for. It is paid for by taxes, taxes paid by the marketplace. This guy seems to think public education is paid for by the money fairy not free markets that pay taxes.

Vouchers did not hurt student learning, poor schools or poor teachers hurt student learning....yet another example of shoddy journalism. Vouchers allow for parents to move schools, if the new school is poor, they allow the new school to be destroyed, destroyed by withdrawing the money and replaced by something else.

This article is yet another example of the forces against this destruction and replacing. The fact that a new school may end up being crappy should not be a surprise to anyone but this guy.

For years I have pointed out the studies which show a strong cause and effect between countries with stronger or improving economies result in improving education scores. If you want to improve a school district try improving the economy.

[kenberg]

I looked up the Fordham study that the article cites
https://edex.s3-us-w...e%20edition.pdf
It's very dense. From what I see it looks like a very honest attempt to grapple with the problem, and they include many caveats about the limitations. Here is the Summary:

Quote

Taken together, the results of this report present a mixed bag of findings regarding the EdChoice voucher program. Although the evidence is not completely unambiguous, the weight of the evidence indicates that EdChoice eligibility improved reading and mathematics outcomes for the students affected. We suspect that this is coming through increased competition for lower-ranked public schools as well as a desire for these schools to improve to avoid losing students to the voucher program; we suspect that the competition is a leading explanation rather than merely avoidance of grading stigma because the regression-discontinuity approaches focusing on the second-best PI are designed to concentrate particularly on the voucher-eligibility component of the system, rather than on the school ratings themselves. We find evidence that the program attracts relatively high-scoring and comparatively advantaged eligible students (though these students are still overwhelmingly low scoring and disadvantaged as a group, relative to the state as a whole) and that this may be due to programmatic rules that require private school admission before voucher application, rather than the reverse, which is seen in other locales such as Florida. And though EdChoice eligibility apparently improves student test scores in general, this is not the case for those who actually use their vouchers to attend private schools, having previously attended relatively high-performing public schools among the EdChoice-eligible schools. Those eligible students (coming from these relatively high-performing public schools) who attend private schools appear to fare considerably worse than we predict that they would have performed had they remained in the public schools. These are averages, of course, and there are some reasons to believe that the private school experiences of EdChoice participants may be better than what we estimate. For instance, private schools participating in the EdChoice program do not face the same high stakes associated with state testing that is aligned to public school curricula but not to any particular private school curriculum. Although since 2009–10, Ohio state law has required the public reporting of average performance of private school students participating in the EdChoice program, there are no formal sanctions or rewards for private schools associated with performance on the state tests. In addition, of course, the experiences of private school students coming from public schools farther away from the threshold of eligibility may have been considerably different from those observed using the methods employed in this report. Nonetheless, this analysis is the best that we were able to do with the information at hand, suggesting that deeper study into the causes of these performance differences—related to differences in school quality, test-curriculum alignment, or other factors-should be a priority.

I pull out a couple of sentences:
"Although the evidence is not completely unambiguous, the weight of the evidence indicates that EdChoice eligibility improved reading and mathematics outcomes for the students affected."
and
" Those eligible students (coming from these relatively high-performing public schools) who attend private schools appear to fare considerably worse than we predict that they would have performed had they remained in the public schools."

So I guess we should try to get the students to become eligible, that improves their abilities, and then tell them not to use their eligibility, since that would ruin their scores. What a plan! But then getting someone ready to fight ion the ring will improve his athleticism, actually climbing into the ring might get him hurt. So I can see this.

Anyway, it does look like a serious effort to see what's up. I find it a challenging read though.

[mike777]

kenberg, on 2017-February-23, 14:03, said:

I looked up the Fordham study that the article cites
https://edex.s3-us-w...e%20edition.pdf
It's very dense. From what I see it looks like a very honest attempt to grapple with the problem, and they include many caveats about the limitations. Here is the Summary:


I pull out a couple of sentences:
"Although the evidence is not completely unambiguous, the weight of the evidence indicates that EdChoice eligibility improved reading and mathematics outcomes for the students affected."
and
" Those eligible students (coming from these relatively high-performing public schools) who attend private schools appear to fare considerably worse than we predict that they would have performed had they remained in the public schools."

So I guess we should try to get the students to become eligible, that improves their abilities, and then tell them not to use their eligibility, since that would ruin their scores. What a plan! But then getting someone ready to fight ion the ring will improve his athleticism, actually climbing into the ring might get him hurt. So I can see this.

Anyway, it does look like a serious effort to see what's up. I find it a challenging read though.


[/left]

Ken your raise a very important point in the discussion about vouchers. You get to stay at your school, your local public school if you desire. You are not forced at gun point to go to a private school. If you think your local school is ok and the new choice of schools are going to harm your kid, don't move.