ALL kids in Tennessee can now attend any two year trade school upon graduation from a state high school. Adults can, as well, based on certain additional requirements (that really are easy after you've lived in-state).
All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free
141–150 of 585 posts
Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me, state wards are one of the four metrics for judging the quality of a country. Wards of the state: our responsibility, through no fault of their own. Prisoners: our responsibility, their fault. Immigrants: not our responsibility, but an indication of how well we can manage our economy. We should be able to put anybody who comes here to work. Emigrants: we should let people leave who don't want to be here. The…
> Prisoners: our responsibility, their fault. What percentage (approximately) of prisoners in the United States would you categorize as "their fault" and not some product of their upbringing/situation?
Prisons should be a place to house people that have been deemed unable to function in society until such time they can (sometimes that is never). This is not necessarily only violence but violent offenders should be the majority, but people that simply refuse to follow the rules of a society also degrade and are a danger to the society over all. We see this today in the way of rampant shoplifting, and car thefts/breakins taking place in some communities.
These are deemed "non-violent" so the offenders are just let go, however once these "non-violent" crimes reach an extreme level businesses close, people stop shopping in the area, insurance companies stop offering insurance, etc etc etc. That is all with out getting into the real psychological effects of having your property stolen and violated in that way.
At the end of the day I am not concerned about their upbringing/situation, I am concerned about their criminality
Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Affirmative action was to address systemic inequalities, not individual ones. Bringing it up in an article about foster kids and then further including the bit about gender feels like flamebait.
Ironically affirmative action is systemic racism itself, no matter how well intentioned.
The reason they take these cases so often is because affirmative action must be narrowly tailored and affirmative action programs are often found to be Unconstitutional.
Also, affirmative action as a whole, as acknowledged by the Supreme Court, is a temporary measure to level the playing field of prior systemic racism. So even in the instances a program is currently a constitutional even that is for a temporary period of time.
People often complain about the nature of it, but generally don’t have any solutions to address the realities of historic discrimination codified in law, at best people suggest to ignore it a do nothing be happy those old laws have been over turned and move on, the problem there is typically the people that suggest doing nothing to right the wrongs of the past benefit from damage of historical systematic racism and discrimination.
Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me, state wards are one of the four metrics for judging the quality of a country. Wards of the state: our responsibility, through no fault of their own. Prisoners: our responsibility, their fault. Immigrants: not our responsibility, but an indication of how well we can manage our economy. We should be able to put anybody who comes here to work. Emigrants: we should let people leave who don't want to be here. The…
> Wards of the state: our responsibility People that really feel this responsibility become foster parents. But saying the state should deal with them isn't taking on that responsibility - at the end of the day actual people need to be their parents. I'm happy to support those people by having taxes directed their way, but the state doesn't get credit for their good deeds.
The common US system where foster families receive funds to provide temporary care for kids in the system isn’t parenting it’s a disaster that’s a massive disservice to kids in the system. In many individual cases it works, but overall it also results in unacceptable amounts of mental, physical, and sometimes even sexual abuse.
Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Affirmative action shouldn't ever have been a contest with prizes for the most unfortunate. It was sold as a way to fix the wrongs of slavery. Having been enslaved legally in the US is not a race, it's an atrocity. The reason we should be paying for foster kids' college is because the state is their parent, so it's our responsibility. In a country that wasn't shit, regular people would be jealous of how kids who were…
Do reparations for slavery even make logical sense? Please cut me some slack here, by the nature of the world we live in, I have not uttered these thoughts to another human being, and they might have obvious flaws. It's tough when you can't talk about ideas out of fear of the consequences. I think nobody argues that it's a vile, morally repugnant thing to enslave another human being. But that was a long time ago, and…
Also the argument that descendants of slaves in America are better off than their counterparts in Africa is problematic because it assumes that the progress of African nations would have been the same without the devastating effects of the Atlantic slave trade, which significantly hindered their development. Furthermore, it risks minimizing the experience of ongoing racial discrimination faced by Black Americans.
The idea of reparations isn't necessarily about compensating individuals for specific harm done to them, but about a society taking responsibility for historic wrongs and making a concerted effort to rectify those systemic inequalities. Reparations could take many forms, including investment in education, healthcare, housing, and economic opportunities for communities disproportionately affected by racial discrimination.
Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free
#146What's to stop parents from putting their kids up for foster care when they turn 15 so they can attend college at 16 for free?
If reunification is determined to be impossible, the state goes to court to sever parental rights. This determination normally takes a year plus, and usually means the parents have checked out or are no longer trying to resolve the issues. Only once parental rights are severed is the child considered "legally free", and is eligible to be adopted into another family. In the ideal case, this is the family they were staying with before parental rights were severed, but not necessarily.
I haven't looked into the details of this article, but I assume these funds will be used for kids that have had parental rights severed, and were either adopted or "age out" of the foster care system.
Once in foster care, most kids are traumatized. Once parental rights are severed, it is incredibly difficult for parents to "re-adopt" their kid. I sure hope no parents are so short sighted to put their child through hell to reduce the cost of college.
Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Affirmative action shouldn't ever have been a contest with prizes for the most unfortunate. It was sold as a way to fix the wrongs of slavery. Having been enslaved legally in the US is not a race, it's an atrocity. The reason we should be paying for foster kids' college is because the state is their parent, so it's our responsibility. In a country that wasn't shit, regular people would be jealous of how kids who were…
I agree completely. Something so striking about the situation as well is that on balance, we have a staggering amount of wealth to share with the less fortunate. Yet these are children, specifically, who deserve every opportunity we can afford them by default. Not “hopeless addicts” or some other group deemed not worth saving by so many of us, but people quite literally the epitome of worth saving. These people need…
Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me, state wards are one of the four metrics for judging the quality of a country. Wards of the state: our responsibility, through no fault of their own. Prisoners: our responsibility, their fault. Immigrants: not our responsibility, but an indication of how well we can manage our economy. We should be able to put anybody who comes here to work. Emigrants: we should let people leave who don't want to be here. The…
> Wards of the state: our responsibility People that really feel this responsibility become foster parents. But saying the state should deal with them isn't taking on that responsibility - at the end of the day actual people need to be their parents. I'm happy to support those people by having taxes directed their way, but the state doesn't get credit for their good deeds.
Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
> regular people would be jealous of how kids who were wards of the state lived In this utopia you describe, I'd think all kids lived like kings.
Utopia has a really low bar if we get it from treating foster kids like middle-class kids.
Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free
#150This is what affirmative action should be... helping people out based on their individual situation, not because their skin color or gender.
Affirmative action shouldn't ever have been a contest with prizes for the most unfortunate. It was sold as a way to fix the wrongs of slavery. Having been enslaved legally in the US is not a race, it's an atrocity. The reason we should be paying for foster kids' college is because the state is their parent, so it's our responsibility. In a country that wasn't shit, regular people would be jealous of how kids who were…
Absolutely. As my mother used to say, parents should (at a minimum) pay for education and therapy (not to mention housing with electricity and indoor plumbing, food, clothes, etc.). Since the government of California is the legal guardian of these children, it's really the least they can do.