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All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

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Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#211

Post by fallingknife »

giantg2 wrote: post #95
WirelessGigabit wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this policy. If it's free then no-one brings their own, and no-one is looked down at. BUT... I checked the menu of a school where I used to live... Pizza, hot dogs, fries... We can make the most delicious vegetables, roasted, ... And they get carbs. Nutrition taken from nature decomposed in its elemental components put back together for the perfect addictive meal...

Interesting, most places I've seen are increasing the food restrictions, including in food brought from home. This is probably something you can address with your district if your state doesn't already some healthy school food law.

How on earth do they have the right to make rules about what food kids bring from home?

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#212

Post by phpisthebest »

bugglebeetle wrote: post #187
phpisthebest wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the day, and this will be controversial it does not matter. 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…

Okay, but this logic is explicitly filtered through class in the US context. Some of the most antisocial members of our society are CEOs, politicians, and similar leaders. The damage they inflict on society often far exceeds that by individual acts of violence, fraud, thievery etc. Think about what has been wrought by Sacklers, the people running 3M, or those who led the country into war premised on lies. Indeed, you…

>>>San Francisco was a lovely city until landlords and real estate speculators turned it into a casino for gambling on housing and office space.

before I even begin to address your others points, many I probably agree with we need to stop with this gas lighting narrative.

landlords and real estate speculators are not the villains of the San Francisco of the story. The city government (and the larger state government) is.

From the endless zoning regulations, environmental regulations, and building regulations that make it impossible to build affordable housing, and a decades long process to build any housing at all to the activist prosecutors refusing to prosecute crime in the city, to the "de-fund the police" movement that has put the local police dept at a huge understaffed situation.... Those are the root causes of the problems. not landlords and real estate speculators

You want to have an honest conversation about corporatism I am game, but you are starting out with disinformation and lies so....

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#213

Post by slashdev »

Manuel_D wrote: post #189
jmerz wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there's actually a lot of academic debate on the merits of reparations, and exactly what and how much reparations should be. A very oversimplified pro argument: if it wasn't for slavery, these families would have generational wealth and better social situations. African Americans in the US ARE disproportionately lower wealth/income and this has CLEAR historical origins. The oversimplified con argument: Okay, but i…

The overall precedence is that reparations are paid to the people who experienced the harm, and the reparations are paid by those culpable of the harm. The Japanese who experienced internment were paid reparations by the United States government that took their property. Holocaust victims that had their property stolen were paid reparations by the former Nazis. By contrast Irish Americans could very justifiably claim…

This argument makes a lot of sense to me.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#214

Post by throwaway72762 »

version_five wrote: post #167
throwaway72762 wrote: post #111

Is everything culture war all the time now on this site? Every post becomes a stupid comment section where we'd be better off getting an LLM to write the comments for us. Here it's people trying to insert their affirmative action narratives and also rant about California a bit (in a backhanded way). We can do better.

What are you looking for? Do you think the post shouldn't have been on here at all? Or if it's here do you think discussion should be limited to a certain perspective or a certain axis? Admitting a political story inherently admits political opinions. What would "doing better" look like?

I completely understand that everything has a political dimension. And the broader culture war is leaving nothing untouched. But that means we have less room for a shared community even in small spaces like this.

What I lament is that the community of tech folks, embodied by sites such as HN, have splintered and moved away from their roots. I mean go watch the documentaries about the early days of the 70s and 80s and even the not so early days of the 00s: vision, tinkering, weirdness, geekery, cussedness, anti-authority, pay it forward, etc. That is what defined the scene. That's our roots and I'd like it to come through in comments here. Instead it's just culture war: us vs. them, grievances, IGMFU, and all the rest.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#215

Post by quickthrower2 »

getmeinrn wrote: post #13

This is what affirmative action should be... helping people out based on their individual situation, not because their skin color or gender.

Yes. I have to add a "but". But why "Foster Kids" and not "Passes means test". That means test would probably include all/most foster kids of course.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#216

Post by rayiner »

jonathanlb wrote: post #145
slashdev wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's true that enslaved people and their enslavers are no longer alive, but the legacy of slavery has left significant and enduring socio-economic disparities between descendants of enslaved people and those who are not. Inequalities in wealth, education, health, and opportunities persist, often along racial lines. These disparities aren't merely coincidental, but have been reinforced by racially discriminatory polic…

> 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

That’s the hight of results-oriented reasoning. The historical norm is that different societies did not progress at the same rate. Europeans got ahead of Africa and Asia in the 1500s-1900s. That’s why they were positioned to engage in things like colonialism to begin with.

But go back a bit further—Britons were about a thousand years late to the Bronze Age. Nobody held them back. It’s just that key milestones of civilizational development aren’t distributed evenly. Because of course they aren’t.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#217

Post by nomat »

slashdev wrote: post #195
nomat wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No. You can't argue with what I said, it's a fact. Facts just are. You can argue about what it means if you want, or how it makes you feel.

you keep saying that but your set of facts is clearly missing many pieces (you admit as much) so to keep repeating it doesn't make it any more true and is really revealing a lot.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#218

Post by mertd »

tarr11 wrote: post #8
starside wrote: post #2

I think this is a good idea. That is the first time in a long time I have thought "wow, the state is doing something useful with my tax dollars"

also free lunches in schools https://www.nycfoodpolicy.org/states-that-have-passed-univer...

Universal pre-k was also a good move.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#219

Post by lostdog »

throwaway72762 wrote: post #111

Is everything culture war all the time now on this site? Every post becomes a stupid comment section where we'd be better off getting an LLM to write the comments for us. Here it's people trying to insert their affirmative action narratives and also rant about California a bit (in a backhanded way). We can do better.

I flagged that top level affirmative action comment, and I hope more people do. Contentless flamewars about unrelated culture war policies are boring, and are a negative contribution to the discussion.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#220

Post by simple-thoughts »

XorNot wrote: post #204
whall6 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If foster children were raised so well that people were jealous, maybe that would create an adverse incentive for people to create more children than they can handle and desert children that they’ve already had?

You live in a democracy. If ward's of the state were well taken care of, it would imply a voting majority who recognize this as valuable. Maybe they would also do other things with that power, like vote for increased assistance and benefits for parents in general, or expand the program to be a blanket "everyone can have free state college".

Social constructs don’t determine what is real or not. Instead they function as processes within a wider ecosystem. Every political decision that’s made has adverse consequences since they require force, no matter the political structure. If something is valuable to people they will do it freely without requiring force; but if something is valuable to a select group at the expense of others, the result is always some degree of negative side effects. It may be possible to argue some social good outweighs those effects, but dismissing them because “we live in a democracy” reveals a totalitarian view of the state.
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