You are in charge of US Domestic Policy - what is your solution to urban poverty?

[JC5188]

I don't think the percentages support that viewpoint. We need to de-commercialize college sports in a big way.

How many college football and basketball coaches make more than the Dean of the Med School, or the Chancellor of the University? Sure most are paid the majority of their salaries by alumni associations, but put that money to work elsewhere. Several years ago, Lew Perkins, the AD of the University of Kansas, was the highest paid state employee in the state.

Doesn't make sense.

Sure it makes sense. Look at the revenue that a top-tier coach brings to big time programs. It's an investment. At many of the schools, the dominant (usually football) pays for ALL of the other sports. Women's golf ain't gonna pay for itself. Yet there are Scholarships.

So, that one high paid coach, if he's doing his job, is paying the salaries for the entire athletic department and all the other scholarship sports. Everybody always jumps ugly (not saying you) at the high paid football coach, while forgetting it's usually the program that makes all the others go. It's a business decision.

As mentioned in the article below, the better the teams do, the more money they make.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...sec/100929214/

I would take university athletics and make it just another category of AA, BA, etc. Instead of making football and basketball players take up space in history and lit classes, they could take classes in business management, contracts, physical therapy and related subjects. I'd also include a basic "fallback" education in case their knees go out or they simply never get drafted.

Can't argue with that, really.







"I've just got like, this 5.56 okay? And it's 55 grain ball. And everybody I've ever seen shot with it, it dicks them up."

---Clint Smith
Thunder Ranch

[SeriousStudent]

I cannot speak for the other cities. But I lived in Dallas, and South Dallas for years. Yes, there are some good neighborhoods with good people south of the Trinity River.

I would start by locking up virtually every politician in Dallas county. The rampant corruption there drove me out of the city, then the county. Nothing you do has any chance of success until you have honest leadership.

[kwelz]

End the war on drugs and put in place a system that focuses on weeding out people who deal hard drugs while getting treatment for addicts.

A complete revamp of the school systems with a focus on job skills and college prep instead of test taking. And lets not forget teaching life skills!

Adult age education and job training classes with placement assistance.

A system where those on welfare work as well. Can't find a job and need welfare? Great! Lots of public service things need done. Pick up trash for the parks department. Have kids and need to stay home? Here is a list of court recordings that need to be typed out. Background in construction? That housing unit over there needs repairs.. Things need to be done. So lets put the people to work doing it. They get money, the stuff gets done, and especially when it improves their area it gives them a sense of worth in themselves and their neighborhood.

Change in policing tactics in the areas with a focus on the officers integrating into the neighborhoods they work. The police that have to play hard should not be the ones who are there every day walking or driving around.

[SteyrAUG]

End the war on drugs and put in place a system that focuses on weeding out people who deal hard drugs while getting treatment for addicts.

If a person can sit in their house and do heroin or whatever without screwing with neighbors or anyone else that's fine. For people who can't do that, I'd create a supervised facility where you can check in, do whatever, but you cannot check out until you are straight and sober. For people who manage to screw even that up, deportation to the land where your drug comes from.

Can't manage your coke habit, we send you to Columbia where it is cheap and plentiful and you can be "their" problem. Heroin, free ticket to the poppy fields of Afghanistan.

[THCDDM4]

I thought your post was well thought out, and I agree whole-heartedly with most everything you wrote, except the above.

I think we actually need to revert back to shop classes, home economics and phys ed. Why? Because we have an infrastructure that needs rebuilding, and we desperately need to return premium manufacturing jobs to our shores. America can not prosper as a service economy.

For the most part, industry didn't leave America because they weren't viable here, they left because cheaper labor markets overseas made them more money.

I agree we should incentivize manufacturing startup's, but we should de-incentivize American-based companies who are manufacturing overseas, make them bring those jobs back home.

Perhaps I misconveyed my point.

We have TONS of folks who are easily molded into factory workers. We need critical thinkers far more.

Shop classes, technical vocations, etc are all good things and we should absolutely have them. But the Prussian style of sit here, bell rings- go over there, bell rings- eat your lunch, bell rings- pull this lever, bell rings- go outside, bell rings- go back to sitting, bell rings...

Fit into a box, do not question authority and don't really learn anything just be complacent and learn to memorize basic shit.

It's got to stop. Children need to really have a larger degree of freedom in their educational experience. We need to allow them to want to learn, learn how to teach themselves with minimal guidance and take on challenges rather than herd them into least common denominator environments.

We need more critical thinkers, period. Public education is a nightmare, I'm ashamed and angry at the state of the educational system in our country. It's pathetic.

We need manufacturing facilities and jobs to come home, absolutely. But we need a revolution in the public education system. Developing the minds of the future generations to be free thinkers, use fact based and testable logic and utilize critical thinking skills is of the utmost importance to the future of our nation.

What we are doing now is a joke and one of the majors contributors to the decay of the very fabric of our culture and our Constitutional Republic.

The public school system gets ahold of people when they are young, maliable and turns the majority of them into mindless complacent drones that can be manipulated incredibly easily and taught just enough to function in society, but not enough to be awake or aware.

Truly, we are in need of a massive rehaul.

[AKDoug]

I'm with you except the sports. Sports are the only shot a lot of these kids have at getting into higher ed.






"I've just got like, this 5.56 okay? And it's 55 grain ball. And everybody I've ever seen shot with it, it dicks them up."

---Clint Smith
Thunder Ranch

Funny thing is... that's not their only chance at getting into higher education. FAR more scholarships are given for being a scholar than an athlete. Focusing on school instead of sports gets more kids into higher education. In my daughter's graduating class of 30 kids (super small school) nobody went to college for sports.. 5 got full rides because of academics.

[AKDoug]

I don't have enough knowledge of inner-cities to comment on making them better. I have a pretty in depth knowledge of rural "poor" issues, though.

There is no real way to make people more "moral", but the decay of the family unit in this country has created some huge issues that I really think are at the root of most of our problems.

[NYH1]

I think what JC5188 was trying to say and JC5188 correct me if I'm wrong was 26 Inf mentioned that college coaches make more $$ then Deans of different departments and such. JC5188 was spot on. Big time coaches especially at the power five conferences, mostly football but even some of the top basketball coaches make schools a TON of money.

College football is the cash cow for athletic departments all over. Ticket sales, some school seat 80, 90 100K plus. Add food, beverages, shirts and all the other things that are sold the moneys huge.

Lacrosse, soccer, baseball, softball, volleyball, hockey ect. cost schools money that football pays for. And what the athletic departments doesn't use, the school gets to use. That's why it happens.

NYH1.

[JC5188]

Funny thing is... that's not their only chance at getting into higher education. FAR more scholarships are given for being a scholar than an athlete. Focusing on school instead of sports gets more kids into higher education. In my daughter's graduating class of 30 kids (super small school) nobody went to college for sports.. 5 got full rides because of academics.

This thread started as a part of a discussion about inner cities. Those are the kids I'm talking about.

I'd be willing to bet that athletic scholarships are a double digit percentage where I live.






"I've just got like, this 5.56 okay? And it's 55 grain ball. And everybody I've ever seen shot with it, it dicks them up."

---Clint Smith
Thunder Ranch

[Crow Hunter]

Perhaps I misconveyed my point.

We have TONS of folks who are easily molded into factory workers. We need critical thinkers far more.

Shop classes, technical vocations, etc are all good things and we should absolutely have them. But the Prussian style of sit here, bell rings- go over there, bell rings- eat your lunch, bell rings- pull this lever, bell rings- go outside, bell rings- go back to sitting, bell rings...

Fit into a box, do not question authority and don't really learn anything just be complacent and learn to memorize basic shit.

It's got to stop. Children need to really have a larger degree of freedom in their educational experience. We need to allow them to want to learn, learn how to teach themselves with minimal guidance and take on challenges rather than herd them into least common denominator environments.

We need more critical thinkers, period. Public education is a nightmare, I'm ashamed and angry at the state of the educational system in our country. It's pathetic.

We need manufacturing facilities and jobs to come home, absolutely. But we need a revolution in the public education system. Developing the minds of the future generations to be free thinkers, use fact based and testable logic and utilize critical thinking skills is of the utmost importance to the future of our nation.

What we are doing now is a joke and one of the majors contributors to the decay of the very fabric of our culture and our Constitutional Republic.

The public school system gets ahold of people when they are young, maliable and turns the majority of them into mindless complacent drones that can be manipulated incredibly easily and taught just enough to function in society, but not enough to be awake or aware.

Truly, we are in need of a massive rehaul.

LOVE that.

Critical thinking is so rare that it is nearly a freaking super power.

I don't get to do the things that I want to do at my job because I spend most of my day, every day, having to think for other people because they can't just stop, observe the problem, determine the variables, develop a hypothesis, test it and iterate as needed to figure out the answer to their problem. People just want an Easy Button and if it gets beyond a 1 or 2 step "If Then" statement they completely fall apart and start doing random things. No one actually THINKS about what they are doing or wants to.

Here is a hilarious 1 step example. We have a piece of hand held equipment that has a labeled "home location" for 5S reasons. It is labeled as a.... wait for it.....

Ribbet Gun.

Why is it labeled that? Because someone told them it was a rivet gun. They apparently had never heard of a rivet but they had heard that a frog goes "ribbet" so they, WITHOUT THINKING, just said it must be a "ribbet" gun and labeled it like that.

When our education puts out people who think there would be something called a "Ribbet Gun" without ever thinking or questioning WTH is a "Ribbet Gun" and are willing to use a "Ribbet Gun" to install Rivets (that have Rivet on the package by the way), we will definitely wind up with a population who worries less about fundamental freedoms and more about what the Kardashians are doing.