I took a look at the Baltimore map, to see how far the police station was from where Freddie Gray was initially put in the van.
Five blocks. It’s five blocks. The police took 45 minutes to drive Freddie Gray five blocks. Google says one could drive in in 4 minutes, but the Baltimore PD somehow needed 45 minutes to go five blocks.
Rhetoric is not completely useless… it gets the issues out there and people talking about them.
I wonder if we and our lawmakers can ever agree on what those solutions could be.
Imo, it’s going to take more than preaching about unwed pregnancy and missing fathers. It’s going to take a shift away from spending massively on prisons and incarceration and more on education reform and job creation. In the present political climate, I don’t see that happening.
@sax That is a good starting point for discussion.
First of all, how do you create good jobs in US? Secondly, I will strongly argue the word “bring” is a bad word here. There are two sides of the situation, one must willing to work to better themselves to qualify for those good jobs any where.
To me, it is relatively simple, promote the idea of family - two parents who raise child(ren) they could afford. The mother was filmed pulling her son out of the street the other day. She had 6 kids as a single mother. It is unfair to those kids, IMHO. It takes generations to move up the SES.
“Rhetoric is not completely useless… it gets the issues out there and people talking about them.”
So much of it is just self serving, preaching to the base. Not actually doing anything about it.
“I wonder if we and our lawmakers can ever agree on what those solutions could be.”
Unlikely, sadly enough.
" Imo, it’s going to take more than preaching about unwed pregnancy and missing fathers. It’s going to take a shift away from spending massively on prisons and incarceration and more on education reform and job creation. In the present political climate, I don’t see that happening."
I don’t see it happening, either. But talking about things in an honest way, is a start. Yet I don’t think people are willing to do what it takes to solve the problems. To start with, completely changing the culture in these police departments will take tremendous resolve, leadership from the top, and less resistance from the union. Unlikely. And preaching about unwed pregnancy and missing fathers is fairly useless if nobody listens. The only thing that would work is action and money spent towards reducing the number of young, single mothers. Birth control door to door, free clinics everywhere, even paying at risk young girls not to have babies, anything to encourage people to wait. The number one route into poverty is being a young, single mother, find a way to stop that and you have massively reduced poverty in this country. But I have no hope that will ever happen.
As a country we must make it more profitable to keep jobs in the US than to take them out of the US.
It’s all about taxes.
Birth rates in the US by race and age of teenager. See page 4.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_01.pdf
It baffles me sometimes, how apparently it is cheaper to move manufacturing jobs from the US to the other side of the world, and then ship everything back. I would think the cost to move all the items over here would be costly, but apparently not. I had heard that costs in China are getting much higher, so perhaps if we can’t get the ultra cheap items from there, production will be more profitable at home. However, I’m afraid they’ll just find another inexpensive country in which to relocate.
Solutions?
It is hard to treat people like animals when they are your neighbors.
^ Great list. I’d also add, from my personal experience, that we need to significantly up the salaries of teachers, stop treating them like glorified babysitters, and have free, universal pre-school.
Taxes. Make it unprofitable to manufacture overseas. Bigger tax breaks to have manufacturing in the cities.
Pay teachers more? Year round teaching then.
There is a very large rally in Baltimore right now. it is a very diverse peaceful crowd. I think there will be problems again at curfew. I spend a lot of time in one particular Baltimore neighborhood and it is hard to see the financial damage that the curfew is doing.
@sax If I remember correctly, companies like GE pays little to no tax. Also, have you ever been at a manufacturing site? How could any city with dense population control the noise, odor, and traffic of manufacturing of a reasonable scale?
Why not call for people to stop using drug? there will also be dealers doing illegal sales of drugs PERIOD. Wasn’t one guy at NY got killed because he was suspected of selling “singles”? How many people on these forum use drug? If one wants a good life for themselves and the family, one does not use drugs, legal or not.
All the solutions I see here are about throwing money at someone. What about one’s own desire and action to get a better life?
I’m dismayed by the fact that Mosby hasn’t recused herself from this case in favor of an independent prosecutor from outside the county. Not only is she married to a city councilman who represents parts of West Baltimore–surely an “appearance of impropriety”, as the standard goes–but in three years she’ll be asking the people of Baltimore to vote for her again (so many things wrong with electing prosecutors…). I think she overcharged in this case, I question her motivations, and I think she needs to step out. Once again, Baltimore doesn’t get it right.
Those issues do not rise to the level of recusal. You could argue that a prosecutor should never prosecute the police because they depend too much on their cooperation to do their jobs. That is, of course, one reason prosecutors so rarely prosecute the police. She is up against competing interests but that happens all the time with prosecutors and judges.
How exactly does black on black crime relate to this case? The “reality” here is * police * on black crime, which is what the rest of us are discussing.
“All the solutions I see here are about throwing money at someone. What about one’s own desire and action to get a better life?”
Did you even read eastcoastcrazy’s list…none of that involves throwing money at someone, except maybe the tax incentives.
And so what?
We throw money at wealthy farmers in agriculture subsidies. We throw money at profitable oil companies in tax subsidies. We throw money at building weapons systems and equipment we don’t need for national defense.
Why shouldn’t we invest in communities and people? The trick is doing it the right way…maybe the solution is a partnership between government and private business.
Ah yes.
How easy… especially in a place with failing schools, no jobs, and no way to move or get out.
Great solution. Why didn’t anyone else think about that!
" Faux news " …wow, not too smug or condescending Momcat2. I never heard that one before. I wonder why they continually dominate the cable news ratings since they are so inferior and all…and their viewers must have to be too, right ?
lje62, there are some people that I just accept that their posts will be mocking, insulting, and condescending. You can call attention to it, but it’s not going to change anything.
I agree with eastcoastcrazy’s list too, for the most part. Not crazy about the concept of legalizing drugs such as meth and heroine, but I am a fan of decriminalizing drugs, particularly for possession. However, if you do not address the root cause of poverty, which is single parenthood, particularly for girls and young women, I believe that the rest of it will accomplish very little.
“Those issues do not rise to the level of recusal. You could argue that a prosecutor should never prosecute the police because they depend too much on their cooperation to do their jobs. That is, of course, one reason prosecutors so rarely prosecute the police. She is up against competing interests but that happens all the time with prosecutors and judges”
That does happen all the time. And when the prosecutors side with the police, as they usually do, everyone shouts out about bias and how there should be independent prosecutors. But when they go against police interests, it’s just fine.
In 2014, Baltimore City schools had a 56% graduation rate. Improving schools and more funding is part of the solution.
Ending mass incarceration, the New Jim Crow, is an important part of the solution.