I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me.

[poindexter]

I grew up near where you live. How many Hispanics work in lawn/yard care, and have done well? The initial investment was a truck, and a lawnmower.

And, with a truck, you can drive from poorer neighborhoods to serve more upscale ones.

Is a truck and a lawnmower beyond the reach of a few hard working kids from Ferguson?

Around Los Angeles, there are so many successful Japanese-Americans, second or third generation, who are dentists, business persons - who went to school at USC or UCLA, and tuition paid for by their parents - the dad a gardener who saved his whole life for his kids to get an education and have a better life. I know of four Americans of Japanese descent whose dads were gardeners. Two brothers and a brother/sister.

Do you remember the LA riots of 1992 - the Korean owned mom and pop stores getting looted, or saved from looting by Korean shop owners? Why on earth don't black americans own the mom and pop stores, in their own neighborhood?

The excuse making and rationalization around here is pathetic. And of course the demonization of a kid who worked his ass off to start his own business - he's the son of a surgeon!!

 

[Dick Whitman]

I'm still interested to know how we are going to get the black community to spontaneously start these millions of businesses with sound business plans.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I grew up near where you live. How many Hispanics work in lawn/yard care, and have done well? The initial investment was a truck, and a lawnmower.

And, with a truck, you can drive from poorer neighborhoods to serve more upscale ones.

Is a truck and a lawnmower beyond the reach of a few hard working kids from Ferguson?

Around Los Angeles, there are so many successful Japanese-Americans, second or third generation, who are dentists, business persons - who went to school at USC or UCLA, and tuition paid for by their parents - the dad a gardener who saved his whole life for his kids to get an education and have a better life. I know of four Americans of Japanese descent whose dads were gardeners. Two brothers and a brother/sister.

Do you remember the LA riots of 1992 - the Korean owned mom and pop stores getting looted, or saved from looting by Korean shop owners? Why on earth don't black americans own the mom and pop stores, in their own neighborhood?

The excuse making and rationalization around here is pathetic.

Again, the alternative is: Shiftless nuggets.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Is a truck and a lawnmower beyond the reach of a few hard working kids from Ferguson?

Given what I've read about the court system of Ferguson, Mo., it might just be.

You don't get $321 in fines and fees and 3 warrants per household from an about-average crime rate. You get numbers like this from bullshirt arrests for jaywalking and constant "low level harassment involving traffic stops, court appearances, high fines, and the threat of jail for failure to pay."
If you have money, for example, you can easily get a speeding ticket converted to a non-moving violation. But if you don't have money it's often the start of a downward spiral that is hard to pull out of:

For a simple speeding ticket, an attorney is paid $50-$100, the municipality is paid $150-$200 in fines and court costs, and the defendant avoids points on his or her license as well as a possible increase in insurance costs. For simple cases, neither the attorney nor the defendant must appear in court.
However, if you do not have the ability to hire an attorney or pay fines, you do not get the benefit of the amendment, you are assessed points, your license risks suspension and you still owe the municipality money you cannot afford….If you cannot pay the amount in full, you must appear in court on that night to explain why. If you miss court, a warrant will likely be issued for your arrest.
People who are arrested on a warrant for failure to appear in court to pay the fines frequently sit in jail for an extended period. None of the municipalities has court on a daily basis and some courts meet only once per month. If you are arrested on a warrant in one of these jurisdictions and are unable to pay the bond, you may spend as much as three weeks in jail waiting to see a judge.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/08/ferguson-and-the-debtors-prison.html

Honestly, that's a huge problem, and it's a racket.

It needs to stop, and should be addressed ASAP.

I drive all over Chicagoland.

You know where you see the most red light and speed cameras? In shirtty neighborhoods.

It's a tax on the poorest members of the communities.

Frankly, I'd outlaw the forking lottery, and cigarets too. They are taxes on the poor as well.

You do realize poor people were gambling before there were lotteries, right? Numbers rackets and stuff. And have fun banning cigarettes. That idea worked so well with alcohol.

 

[LongTimeListener]

they didn't let racism get in their way.

By and large white people didn't let racism get in the immigrants' way either. At least not nearly to the degree they did with African-Americans. That's a part of it you're not getting.

Starting from zero is a lot better than starting from negative 1,000.

OK, so let's stipulate that many poor/uneducated African-Americans start at, as you put it, negative 1,000. For example, think of that heartbreaking story of that little girl ... Dasani? ... in the New York Times awhile back. Is it your contention that white racism is why she's very likely to stay at negative 1,000?

It depends how broadly you want to go. I am assuming (and it might have said in the story) that if she is 6, her grandparents are somewhere between 40 and 45. Think about the home life of an African-American child born to uneducated parents between 1969 and 1974 in New York City. Is that a model for success, as most of our parents gave us? It's the cycle we all know about.

So take "illegal" drugs out of it and concentrate on things that happen in white households. If parents smoke, children are far more likely to smoke. If parents drink heavily, children are far more likely to drink heavily. Why, then, would we expect it to be different regarding the far more addictive drugs of crack and heroin? And why is it reasonable to think a multi-generational family that has never had any exposure or opportunity for "the good life" of education and stability would suddenly find it in the form of a 17-year-old teenage girl? Unfortunately, Dasani's path was almost assuredly set at birth. And society at large bears an enormous burden for that.

Regarding white racism of today ... nobody is going to call it racism. But yes, the deck is stacked almost impossibly against her.

--White flight, either to the suburbs or to private schools, has re-segregated the school system to almost as large a degree as it was before Brown v. Board of Education.

--College acceptance has been set up almost entirely to favor white people, with its near-singular focus on standardized tests and the rise of prep programs that cost thousands of dollars.

--Remember Trayvon Martin's girlfriend on the witness stand and the way she was so roundly and gleefully mocked on the witness stand? That's probably how Dasani is going to sound in 10 years, because that is local dialect. And that was ugly, ugly racism at its worst.

So, yeah ... as a matter of individuals, the great shame is that her parents provide nothing. But returning to what deck has been saying, why is that? How is it that one portion of society -- and the one that has been mistreated the most viciously and violently -- stays so far behind the curve? The answer is either that there's a big historical problem, or that black people just aren't as good as the rest of us.

 

[poindexter]

I grew up near where you live. How many Hispanics work in lawn/yard care, and have done well? The initial investment was a truck, and a lawnmower.

And, with a truck, you can drive from poorer neighborhoods to serve more upscale ones.

Is a truck and a lawnmower beyond the reach of a few hard working kids from Ferguson?

Around Los Angeles, there are so many successful Japanese-Americans, second or third generation, who are dentists, business persons - who went to school at USC or UCLA, and tuition paid for by their parents - the dad a gardener who saved his whole life for his kids to get an education and have a better life. I know of four Americans of Japanese descent whose dads were gardeners. Two brothers and a brother/sister.

Do you remember the LA riots of 1992 - the Korean owned mom and pop stores getting looted, or saved from looting by Korean shop owners? Why on earth don't black americans own the mom and pop stores, in their own neighborhood?

The excuse making and rationalization around here is pathetic.

Again, the alternative is: Shiftless nuggets.

Seeing that n-word is repulsive. I'd go with shiftless, lazy African-Americans!

 

[poindexter]

--College acceptance has been set up almost entirely to favor white people, with its near-singular focus on standardized tests and the rise of prep programs that cost thousands of dollars.

How old are your kids, LTL? My kids have graduated high school the last two years, and I have gone through every high school seminar on going to college. I don't agree with that statement for a second.

 

[LongTimeListener]

This is not something I love to talk about at cocktail parties among fellow lefties, but I'm definitely not sold on a minimum wage hike as a solution. The GOP might be right. It might be a drag on development in those neighborhoods. Nations like Bangladesh, to name one, and China to name another, have been able to advance partly because they had cheap labor to sell.

1) The GOP has been railing about minimum-wage doomsday since it was first created at 25 cents an hour in 1938, and has continued to rail about it with every subsequent raise. It's bullshirt and always has been.

2) I don't think I want to live in a country that writes off major cities as "eh, better than Bangladesh."

 

[LongTimeListener]

--College acceptance has been set up almost entirely to favor white people, with its near-singular focus on standardized tests and the rise of prep programs that cost thousands of dollars.

How old are your kids, LTL? My kids have graduated high school the last two years, and I have gone through every high school seminar on going to college. I don't agree with that statement for a second.

Well, you're wrong, and there is all sorts of data and writing about it. Check out the articles on the changes in the SAT, one of the big reasons they're doing that is the gaming of the system by the testing companies and the spectacular results they achieve with said gaming of the system.

 

[MisterCreosote]

But, let's assume for a second that a family member, or family friend, or respected community member owned a Junk Truck, or a Dollar Van, or a Dunkin Donuts.

Let's assume you busted your balls working for this guy, putting in 80 hours a week.

Let's assume you did a great job for him, and helped him grow and manage this business.

And, working all of these hours, even at a low hourly rate, let's assume you scraped together a couple of bucks.

Do you think this guy might back you in opening your own Junk Tuck, Dollar Van, or Dunkn' Donuts in a neighboring community?

I guess it's possible. Can we also assume that at least some people in poverty have higher aspirations than hauling junk or making doughnuts and many more institutional roadblocks to achieving them and that's at least part of the reason they're impoverished in the first place?

Also, I busted my ass working during that time not so someone would take a chance on me doing the same exact thing. I busted my ass to get out of that situation so maybe, one day, I wouldn't have to scrap and claw for everything in life.

And, as hard as I worked, the thing that allowed me to break out of it was luck.

 

[Dick Whitman]

This is not something I love to talk about at cocktail parties among fellow lefties, but I'm definitely not sold on a minimum wage hike as a solution. The GOP might be right. It might be a drag on development in those neighborhoods. Nations like Bangladesh, to name one, and China to name another, have been able to advance partly because they had cheap labor to sell.

1) The GOP has been railing about minimum-wage doomsday since it was first created at 25 cents an hour in 1938, and has continued to rail about it with every subsequent raise. It's bullshirt and always has been.

It's not total bullshirt, though, I don't think. And it's particularly not bullshirt in 2014, with cheap labor available elsewhere in the world. Unskilled Americans, no different than unskilled Bangladeshis and Chinamen, need something to sell. Cheap labor would be something to sell. It's what migrant workers sell, for example.

 

[poindexter]

--College acceptance has been set up almost entirely to favor white people, with its near-singular focus on standardized tests and the rise of prep programs that cost thousands of dollars.

How old are your kids, LTL? My kids have graduated high school the last two years, and I have gone through every high school seminar on going to college. I don't agree with that statement for a second.

Well, you're wrong, and there is all sorts of data and writing about it. Check out the articles on the changes in the SAT, one of the big reasons they're doing that is the gaming of the system by the testing companies and the spectacular results they achieve with said gaming of the system.

No, I'm not wrong. You are talking about the high end universities. If you are any kind of student, you can achieve a test score and grades good enough (without having to take tutoring for SATs) to get into a San Jose State University, or Fresno State or Long Beach State. There is a ton of money available for low income/minority students. Go to the high school sponsored seminars.