We have been following the general trend toward criminalizing conduct in America and particularly the use of criminal penalties in our schools (here and here). Now, a study by Texas Appleseed shows Texas schools routinely using criminal misdemeanors against unruly students.
The widespread use of criminal citations included a six-year-old child. The tickets were issued for a wide range of conduct usually handled by a call to the parents, including disrupting class, leaving school early and schoolyard fights. Dallas schools are particularly known for their use of criminal citations.
There is little discussion or apparent concern over the criminalization of our society and schools. We are now turning on our children — using the criminal system to educate them on their responsibilities.
Source: CBS
Thanks for the post. I’ve been reading your blogs lately and it was great.
Placing police in minority area schools and criminalizing behaviour of the type that was once handled entirely in the school is an essential part of the school to prison pipeline. The goal is to get Blacks and to a lesser extent Hispanics registered in the criminal justice system as soon as possible so their photographs can be used in lineups for rape and armed robbery investigations and consequently they can be wrongly imprisoned based on faulty eye witness identification.
The army of occupation policing of poor colored communities is justified by the belief that all residents of these communities are criminals by definition, not because of anything the do or don’t do. That some of the residents may not ever have committed a crime does not mean that these “innocent” residents should not be prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to serious prison time as they share in the collective responsibility for the crimes of their neighbors and relatives just as all Muslims, Palestinians and Arabs are collectively responsible for the kamikaze airliners of 11 September 2001. The latter is the reason US authorities feel no shame about framing and railroading into an 86 year sentence an innocent Aafia Siddiqui whom the US had imprisoned for 5 years in Bagram.
Also I should point out that the $772 billion we owe the Chinese? Is still considerably less than the $900 billion wasted in a war we shouldn’t even be involved in. And that toll keeps ticking to the tune of $7.3 billion per month for Iraq alone – $12 billion per month if you include all of it.
The wars are sapping our economic strength.
Not our inadequate social support infrastructure.
“Had the war, TARP and stimulus not taken place we would still be in a bad way with the unfunded liabilities.”
A statement based upon what exactly? Wishful thinking?
Certainly not based upon the budget surplus that Bush squandered.
Buddha is Laughing:
First of all, Bush had no choice but to go into Afghanistan. I agree about Iraq, bad idea.
The budget deficits increased significantly do to TARP and the stimulus. Probably more from the stimulus than from TARP.
Yes we did have an on book budget surplus but we still had the unfunded liabilities of social security and medicare. So your assertion is only partially correct.
Had the war, TARP and stimulus not taken place we would still be in a bad way with the unfunded liabilities. And a portion of our debt would still be owned by foreign countries, albeit less than what we now owe.
from wikipedia:
“The US debt in the hands of foreign governments was 25% of the total in 2007,[19] compared to 13% in 1988.[20] Despite the declining willingness of foreign investors to continue investing in US dollar denominated instruments as the US dollar fell in 2007,[21] the U.S. Treasury statistics indicate that, at the end of 2006, non-US citizens and institutions held 44% of federal debt held by the public.[22] About 66% of that 44% was held by the central banks of other countries, in particular the central banks of Japan and China. In May 2009, the US owed China $772 billion.[23]
In total, lenders from Japan and China held 44% of the foreign-owned debt.[24] This exposure to potential financial or political risk should foreign banks stop buying Treasury securities or start selling them heavily was addressed in a recent report issued by the Bank of International Settlements, which stated, “‘Foreign investors in U.S. dollar assets have seen big losses measured in dollars, and still bigger ones measured in their own currency. While unlikely, indeed highly improbable for public sector investors, a sudden rush for the exits cannot be ruled out completely.”[25]
On May 20, 2007, Kuwait discontinued pegging its currency exclusively to the dollar, preferring to use the dollar in a basket of currencies.[26] Syria made a similar announcement on June 4, 2007.[27] In September 2009 China, India and Russia said they were interested in buying IMF gold to diversify their dollar-denominated securities.[28] However, in July 2010 China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange “ruled out the option of dumping its vast holdings of US Treasury securities” and said gold “cannot become a main channel for investing our foreign exchange reserves” because the market for gold is too small and prices are too volatile.[29]”
Chan L.,
How much money did TARP actually cost? I saw a story a few months ago that said it was far less loss than originally projected.
Chan,
Have you forgotten who initiated the corporate welfare that is TARP? Bush.
Have you forgotten who kicked military spending into overdrive? Bush.
Have you forgotten who started an illegal war for personal profit but funded by bond sales to foreign governments in addition to tax dollars? Bush.
Have you forgotten that military spending as reported to the public by the OMB is greatly underestimated because of black projects exempt from reporting requirements?
We had a budgetary surplus when Bush took office, too.
So once again, the borrowing in question was done primarily by the Bush administration.
You’re wrong yet again.
Bubbha:
how long have we been selling bonds, etc? The debt increased due to the TARP and stimulus. Bail out to wall st. crooks and union thugs. We have been borrowing for years, it didnt just happen under Bush’s watch.
Seems like social programs to me. Or have you forgotten GM and all of those public sector union pensions?
Chan,
Except were not mortgaged out as a country to the Chinese to fund social support mechanisms.
We’re mortgages out because we kept selling the bonds to fund an illegal war started for personal profit by the Bush/Cheney Crime Family. U.S. military spending accounts for 40% of global arms expenditures and is six times the amount China spends on their military.
Giving money to the poor? Hardly. The money from those bond sales is being used social subsidies for the military-industrial complex.
Again, you’re completely wrong in your gyrations attempting to justify your “greed first” philosophy.
Bubbha:
“If you don’t like paying taxes?
Stop.
In any country you should choose to live in.
See how well that works out for you.”
Yep they will the full force of government to throw you in jail and take your property.
I hope you like being a slave to the Chinese what with all the interest on the debt we are paying them. You probably bitch about the poor having to pay interest to credit card companies which operate in a somewhat free market. But are OK for them to pay interest to a communist country so that we can give them free stuff.
Doesn’t make much sense to me.
Gyges:
you probably don’t make very much money so you could care less about voting a tax increase on those nasty rich people.
Hell, you probably do it out of some kind of sick envy.
More anti-legal, anti-social (and yet somehow self-congratulatory) nonsense is only going to further convince me you’re not as you represent, Brian.
Anarchy is the political choice of children and criminals.
Anarchy by definition is a lack of government and the resultant lawlessness.
The rule of law is the only thing that – as a species – keeps us from killing and eating each other in both a literal and metaphorical sense.
If you’ve always landed on the wrong side of the legal system you should consider something else, although incompetence will do.
Vielleicht ist es Pech.
Vielleicht ist es Gerechtigkeit.
mespo727272, January 14, 2011 at 4:29 pm:
“Chan L:
“DPR Korea is a repressive communist/socialist regime. It represses people politically and economically.
********************
I think the same could be said of many of the world’s religions.”
####################
Now I know why I am a hopeless case. In every encounter foisted upon me against my conscience and my will, with the legal establishment in the U.S.A. it has worked at repressing me both politically and economically.
Did I just repeat the stupidest blunder of my whole life?
Nifty is it? Are others making my arguments for me better than I can?
I am really stupid. 🙂 I once inquired of an Internet group focused on issues about religion, what religion might be as process. That question appears to have also interested Alfred North Whitehead.
As an exercise of religious process, I learned that the observable religion of that group appeared to me to prohibit understanding what religion might be as process.
Have I any clue about what I am doing? Obviously not, because I am shown to be perfectly incompetent at living according to the law.
I come here in the hope of learning, and what did I learn?
Was my sin not committing suicide when yet gametes?
Why did I not know better than to wake up this morning?
Süßer Schlaf! Du kommst wie ein reines Glück?
No, thanks, I prefer being awake.
Tithes anyone?
Chan L:
“DPR Korea is a repressive communist/socialist regime. It represses people politically and economically.
********************
I think the same could be said of many of the world’s religions.
Chan,
I’m for democratic socialism, which retains free market capitalist mechanism for all markets that don’t pertain to social stability and national security and which like all governments, operates off of tax revenues.
If you utilize Social Security?
That’s a socialist program.
Medicare/Medicaid?
Same deal.
Interstate highways?
Built with military transport in mind but utilized by all as a form of socialized asset.
Ever call the police or fire department?
The paid for by tax dollars – a social support system so you don’t have to put out your own fires and shoot your own criminals.
Public schools, you know, those things of which some give better educations than you’re paying premium for?
Socialized support system to create better educated (and therefor more highly skilled) workers.
You just don’t want any taxes because you’re a greedy lil’ sociopath who only thinks of “me, Me, ME!” as demonstrated on the Ron Paul thread. So you insist on misusing poli sci terminology in an attempt to demonize anything that isn’t Libertarian – which despite the name isn’t about liberty but rather about avoidance of personal accountability.
If you don’t like paying taxes?
Stop.
In any country you should choose to live in.
See how well that works out for you.
And seriously, your obsession with me is indeed bordering on creepy. What are you? A masochist? Have you got a man-crush, greed boy? You should be working on the paper you have due in whatever you are claiming to be your major this week, shouldn’t you?
Chan,
So, which form of Government doesn’t run on tax revenue?
Oh, and I donate part of my return every year towards the elections fund. I also usually buy a State parks pass, donate money to the local public library, and have voted for tax increases, most of which passed.
So I’d say that yes, people to voluntarily give money to the government. At least in Colorado.
Your obsession with Buddha’s gone beyond cute to sort of creepy.
Mespo727272:
A cult of personality may have some religious aspects but it is not a religion.
DPR Korea is a repressive communist/socialist regime. It represses people politically and economically.
Bubbha:
are you or are you not in favor of socialism?
How is money taken from people in a socialist society? People dont volunteer to give the government money do they?
Chan,
How exactly does being a proponent of due process and maintaining societal equilibrium by balancing the rights of the one against the rights of others equate to being a proponent of force?
I’d like a good laugh, greedy clown boy.
*honk**honk*
That substandard education is serving you well.