Posted on 09/09/2016 12:16:50 AM PDT by Behind the Blue Wall
In the last couple of weeks, we've seen Trump roll out his plan for reviving America's inner cities and other economically depressed areas. As someone who has in various capacities worked on this issue, I must say that Trump has brilliantly boiled down the question down to the three elements that would form the essential foundation of an effective federal urban policy: law and order, school choice and trade reform.
In my 20 or so years of working on this issue, I've met with thousands of people who live in these communities, and I can guarantee you that the vast majority of these people will nod their heads in agreement if they allow themselves to hear Trump's message. Sure, there are professional race hustlers, poverty pimps, and agitators in every community who can be counted upon to try to prevent that from happening by tossing around the "racist" accusation every chance they get, but underneath that layer of slime, there are in fact millions of hard-working, community-minded people who understand that this agenda of safety, quality education and meaningful work is the agenda that can deliver on the promise of a better day.
My only hope is that Trump finds a way to cut through the noise to reach people with this simple, but effective message. If he does, I predict a seismic shift in the black and Latino vote towards the Republican ticket this November.
Good message.
“Trade reform” sounds expensive. How much will those of us not in the inner city need to pony up?
A lot. The price for many of the goods you purchase will shoot up.
So the term really used should have been “wallet reform.”
Trump should deport 20 million and their would be jobs.
I briefly taught in an inner-city Catholic high school in Philadelphia. Only about 10-15% of our students were Catholic. The reason for attending our school was in many, if not most cases, the relative safety and order of parochial school. These kids’ parents were desperate to get their kids out of the unsafe and ineffective public schools, and this was one way they could do it. Literacy was abysmal, with my freshmen students averaging about a 3rd grade literacy level. Not all kids were average . . . I was trying to teach kids at 1st grade reading levels. I was there for 4 months. In that time, over 10% of my students had been assaulted on the way to school or home. Usually it was public school kids preying on the less thuggish parochial school kids. Our students were tough, street-smart inner city kids, but just not as rough as the others, and they paid for it. This is a horrible environment for raising a family. I never discussed politics with those parents, but I don’t doubt that some of them could be reached with a message of safety and school choice.
Trade reform is not specifically inner city.
Government programs have replaced the family as the safety net. Government has replaced the family as the determinant of what minors can/should and cannot do.
From taxes to EBT, Medicaid and Education government needs to defer to the family and let the institution of the family to come back. It took 50+ years to destroy the family. It might take 50+ years to rebuild it as a strong institution in society.
It angers me that several cities offer some version of school vouchers while suburban and rural (read: “white”) parents are stuck with the bills - while unable to pay private school tuition. As my diocese contracts, few of the urban schools are left; there was simply no benefit to operating them when there were practically NO Catholic students left.
The NWO started by Bush the elder kicked off the unforced and stupid de industrialization of the USA. This is a Marxist’s dream come true and a lot of useful idiots who support “free trade” have already spewed their non sense on this thread.
Exactly. Parents who pay tuition for private or parochial schools aren’t exempt from the schools portion of their property taxes. So they’re paying twice.
Also, if you’re a homeowner, you’re still paying schools taxes even after your kids are grown and gone, while renters are exempt.
Sure, the landlord gets to incorporate the property taxes into higher rent. But then the sky-high rent needs to be “subsidized” for low income and single parents, by ...guess who?
Taxpayers, of course. Three strikes.
They ought to be offered to every family regardless of race, income, residence, etc., but I think to get it going, it makes sense to start where the needs are greatest. The tax impacts are negligible because it’s diverting funds that are already going to schools, just instead of union-controlled, overpaid bureaucrat-run daycare centers, it’ll be going to schools that actually try to educate.
Yep, very true. This financial squeeze and poor employment situation are making it very difficult to keep up enrollment at our suburban parochial school. Parents are hurting, and taxes are high. It is difficult to pay school tuition on top of it all.
True on all points; that is why so few young Americans will ever buy a home. When area costs soar (here in NJ 3/4 of our property tax burdens are school taxes), they simply move along (often following employers leaving for the same reasons). To keep that flexibility/mobility, many of those same young Americans will never have children either - hence the mass trafficking of the Third World’s youth into our public school districts. Demographically, NJ is drastically different when you compare the over-50 population and the under-30 group; pardon the pun, but it is night and day.
The problem with the scenario you describe is that basically gibsmedats get school choice while taxpayers’ children deal with the broken public school systems. Here in NJ each municipality is expected to fund its own schools, but the welfare reservations have no tax base (so they rely on fed/state/county aid); basically I’m supporting my local school district and their vouchers in their school districts (and they get private schooling from it). It is open affirmative action, and starts at the age of five; that preferential treatment comes at a cost to the Americans bearing the tax burdens, and they are quickly disappearing as a result.
I think it’s a legitimate concern, and I would bet that most people who advocate school choice would like it to be available to every kid regardless of income. But keep in mind that school choice does not present a net increase in money spent on education for kids on the “welfare reservations” as you put it. The districts in those areas are already supported by fed/state/county aid; vouchers simply take that same pot of money and allow it to follow the kids to wherever they go to school.
I understand that, but when I am the municipal/county/federal taxpayer it means I am providing vouchers so gibsmedats can go to better schools than my own children (even though my district is better).
I’m in the same boat, pay a crapload of property taxes to live in a decent neighborhood with good schools, but it seems like a no-brainer that I’d prefer to have my taxes going to a charter or private school that is actually trying to educate kids than a union-controlled, dogma-factory run by Democrat/bureaucrats. I would also invite you to consider tha the teacher’s unions are the number one source of funding for the Democratic Party. That’s what your taxes are currently going towards.
If you’ve seen my posts over the years, I’ve maintained that the Democratic Party is merely the political arm of the teachers’ unions. Remember early in his presidency when Otoken would constantly harp about hiring new teachers? They have a perfect arrangement: commissars in every district, feeding on the occupied territory via taxes, using those taxes to strangle taxpayers even further.
My issue isn’t with charter schools; it is with vouchers that put gibsmedats in private schools while the people who pay for it are forced to use the regular public schools (with unionized teachers). Here in NJ you pay a crapload of property taxes to live in areas that aren’t even decent - just physically secure.
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