Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you give me an example, other than voting, of how democracy is collective bargaining? You're not considering wedge issues? What if the candidate that would improve your working conditions also has a stance on an issue that you are strongly opposed to? For example, do you vote for the candidate who will give you a small raise but also disagrees with you on abortion? What if all of the candidates feel like siding w…
Can you give me some examples, other than voting, of what constitutes democracy? > You're not considering wedge issues? Maybe our systems of government shouldn't have this weakness. This is what I was talking about when I mentioned the "strong indictment".
Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API
201–210 of 273 posts
Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should everything be federalized? There is no article in the constitution which mandates (or permits) federal supervision of state powers (such as the police power). The fact that voters fail to hold their lower-level governments to account does not mean that all power (and failure) should be centralized.
The federal government is responsible for enforcing citizens’ civil rights when states can’t, won’t or don’t.
Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API
#203It's crazy to me that in 2020, there isn't comprehensive, mandatory Federal tracking of police-involved shootings. There's no reason that this data shouldn't be mandated to be aggregated and researched, other than to continue propagating a culture of secrecy. From the FBI's Use-of-Force data collection site[0]: > Is it mandatory for law enforcement agencies to contribute to this data collection? > The FBI has no lega…
This is run by the Seattle PD. It's quite detailed. It uses Tableau for visualizations. You can see a lot there.
And ironically, there seemed to be more protests directed against the Seattle PD than other departments. So I'm not sure that this dashboard of data actually matters to protestors.
Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Collective bargaining evens out the power imbalances between workers and their employers. The reason it's strange is because if the government is a democracy (representative or direct), there should already be a mechanism for collective bargaining. The fact that this is often insufficient strikes me as a pretty strong indictment of our systems of government.
In a private company, there is also a mechanism for collective bargaining, without a union. The workers could just buy up all the outstanding stock, and replace the board. And yet, nobody considers that to be sufficient to deny workers their right to organize.
Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you give me some examples, other than voting, of what constitutes democracy? > You're not considering wedge issues? Maybe our systems of government shouldn't have this weakness. This is what I was talking about when I mentioned the "strong indictment".
You're the one that wrote, "It's not just direct voting." I'm just asking for an example other than direct voting. I'm legitimately trying to understand your point but so far I still don't see the link between democracy and collective bargaining.
Examples of things other than direct voting include campaign contributions, talking to the media, going door to door. In the case of teachers, you could talk directly to parents during meetings.
There are all kinds of ways to influence elections that go well beyond simply casting your vote.
Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API
#206Defund McDonalds, and then go see if you get a cheeseburger. Nothing is free.
Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
The federal government is responsible for enforcing citizens’ civil rights when states can’t, won’t or don’t.
First of all, rights aren't "enforced". They're assumed given, and sometimes enumerated in law. Enforcement against violators is largely a discretionary matter of limited resources.
Edit: The DOJ Civil Rights Division uses the word “enforce” right on their homepage: https://www.justice.gov/crt
Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for the link. I agree that this is a very politicized issue and that can make finding objective info tricky. I checked out the first case study and it looks like you are correct that the brick and mortar charter schools significantly outperform the online ones. However, at least in that study, the brick and mortar charters slightly outperformed public schools in reading but underperformed in math. However,…
So, it's certainly not the case that charters are uniformly better in every case. There's quite a bit of variation. The basic idea behind charter schools is that they eliminate the union (that's almost literally their entire purpose). But what that does is it allows them the freedom to experiment with new styles of education, without filtering it through the bureaucracy of the union. In effect, that means there's goi…
That's not the public position of charter schools. Charter schools are based on the idea that more flexibility will give better results, that has nothing to do with unions. The flexibility comes largely from not being pushed around by the school board and subject to testing and limits. Unions are willing to be flexible with education structure
The fact that most charter schools insist on no unions is what drives much of the opposition which sees them as a bad faith stalking horses for people who want to destroy union power. If charter schools were universally unionized there would be much less opposition!
Compare with magnet schools which are unionized. (But still have to deal with school board oversight)
> Over time, as people figure out what works and what doesn't, I would expect to see them continue to widen the gap between themselves and traditional public schools.
I don't see the evidence for this. Studies show Charter schools perform no better then regular public schools. Some places that have really crappy public schools may try to turn to more charter schools on the chance that on average they might be better but I'd say reforming the regular school system would work better (even though it might be harder)
Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you give me an example, other than voting, of how democracy is collective bargaining? You're not considering wedge issues? What if the candidate that would improve your working conditions also has a stance on an issue that you are strongly opposed to? For example, do you vote for the candidate who will give you a small raise but also disagrees with you on abortion? What if all of the candidates feel like siding w…
Can you give me some examples, other than voting, of what constitutes democracy? > You're not considering wedge issues? Maybe our systems of government shouldn't have this weakness. This is what I was talking about when I mentioned the "strong indictment".
Based on your last comment I think our disagreement is less about what makes a democracy and more about what constitutes collective bargaining. I don't see a difference between the examples you cited and a worker at a private company telling their neighbours to boycott the company until working conditions improve. Both of these are individual actions and unless they're organized at a larger scale the word "collective" doesn't really apply to either of them.
Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's crazy to me that in 2020, there isn't comprehensive, mandatory Federal tracking of police-involved shootings. There is a billion dollar lobby that goes up to bat whenever law enforcement gets bad press, or legislation they don't like gets proposed. While I'm in favor of unionization, I do not support organizations that represent the strong arm of the state's desire to operate opaquely and without oversight fro…
It's confusing for me that so many people will complain about how the police unions prevent reform and allow for bad behavior -- but then support unions for all other public sector workers.