Yo Wes Moore might be legit!

[Pressure]

So far, Wes has done what I’ve expected. He’s got a Dem super majority in the legislature and he’s also got bipartisan marks in his cap. The minimum wage is increasing to $15 an hour earlier than was initially passed. He wants to index the minimum wage so it automatically increases but there’s Dems who are pouring cold water.

He’s big on letting kids have a service year after high school. That program is launching this year. Getting kids civically engaged is a good thing esp if they’re unsure about their career trajectory.


Biggest difference from Hogan so far? We now how have a Governor who actually cares about Baltimore City. The Red Line though still has no concrete steps taken but the project’s revival seems to be on the way after Hogan killed it.

Getting Across Baltimore

Gov. Wes Moore’s credibility in the largest city in Maryland rides on building a light-rail line long blocked by racist fears.

prospect.org

The other red flag is that he’s adopting Hogan’s plan to add toll roads on the Capital Beltway (I-495) and I-270. We aren’t supposed to be Virginia. That money should be put to expanding MARC train service in Montgomery County.

The rising crime across the state is a problem as it is in DC. So far, not sure what his directive is beyond the staffing vacancies of State Police and trying to offer economic programs for youth.

Thanks for the constructive input. Seems like he’s still a bit of a mixed bag, but has some positive initiatives.

I do see why my folks from Baltimore seem warm to him.

 

[Pressure]

You claimed I criticized you for being a computer scientist, when until now I had never known that was your job.

I feel like you have some sort of quota where you have to make up a random lie about me at least once a week.

Bro stop. Go get some rest. You aren’t being constructive at all.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Bro stop. Go get some rest. You aren’t being constructive at all.

You made three bad faith attacks on me, including straight fabrications, then bytch about constructiveness when I respond. That, incidentally, is another bad faith argument.

If you want to focus on constructive discussion, then all you have to do is start trying it yourself. There's been at least 3-4 incidents in the last month where you've just randomly lied on me in a thread, then either ghosted or tried to change the subject when I called you out.

Why is it so hard to just discuss the topic?

 

[Voice of Reason]

@Rhakim since you are speaking on poverty I want to get your thoughts on McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility

McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility

The economic state of Black America: What is and what could be

Black Americans face gaps in representation, wages, education, business ownership, and more. This comprehensive report looks at multiple economic realities Black Americans face and the opportunities in closing these racial gaps.

www.mckinsey.com

Do you think their remedies can be effective.

 

[Pressure]

You made three bad faith attacks on me, including straight fabrications, then bytch about constructiveness when I respond. That, incidentally, is another bad faith argument.

If you want to focus on constructive discussion, then all you have to do is start trying it yourself. There's been at least 3-4 incidents in the last month where you've just randomly lied on me in a thread, then either ghosted or tried to change the subject when I called you out.

Why is it so hard to just discuss the topic?

This is nonsense. You’ve tried to hand wave away my opinions and the opinions of @88m3 and @wire28 because you don’t believe we can speak on the low income struggles because we have good jobs.

So I do take exception when I see you point to fields that we work in as not fields you target. It’s bad faith, but it even more bad faith that you refuse to actually put your theories to test of where you think a guy was to where he is today.

The problem you’re running into here is you’re so concerned with attempting to win every argument that you lose track of the shot you say when you get frustrated. This here is another example.

I’ve now asked you going on 4 times to speak on what Wes Moore is doing and you’re refusing because you’re not interested. Either because your theories are wrong or that’s never what this is about — an objective critique on Wes Moore.

Either way, I’m not going to further this pointless back and forth with you.

You’ve expressed numerous times this site isn’t good for your mental health and you’re going back down that same path you did previous times when you needed to take a break. Posting non stop arguing over nothing from the middle of the night through mid day.

But let me remind you again, I don’t actually care about your ruminations.

As a philosophy and computer science major most of what you do is see through. You’re good at research, crafting arguments, but that’s where it ends.

 

[Voice of Reason]

These low-effort strawman attacks are bizarre. Do ya'all not even want to look like you're serious?

I did a ton of background research on him including reading his entire book, came in wanting to like him and not even being skeptical at all, and got turned off solely by who he presents himself as. Did you read the book? He's a Colin Powell fanboy, a Bush White House staffer twice over (under both Tom Ridge and Condelezza Rice), he spends the entire last chapter of his book just listing his after-college experiences one-by-one like he's putting together another college application essay without demonstrating the slightest awareness of what the people he was interacting with actually were like, then went on to be an investment banker with Deutsche Bank and Citibank.

Worst of all, he presents himself as being totally clueless regarding the causes of systematic poverty. He wrote an entire book about why he succeeded as a suburban kid from a middle-class family with educated parents and high-status clergy relatives who attends some of the most elite private schools in the nation and ends up doing well despite being a juvenile delinquent...yet compares himself directly to a poor kid from inner-city Baltimore raised by an uneducated single mother with drug-dealing relatives who goes to fukked-up public schools and gets left behind. Then his conclusion is that he succeeded because of the "stories he listened to" (i.e. Colin Powell biography, military school role models) and not all the ridiculous material and social advantages he had. Which sounds great if you're making money selling books and feel-good TV specials, because your life is about "selling those stories", but isn't how society really works.

On top of that, he's been a top-level nonprofit executive handling hundreds of millions of dollars in charitable funds, and used it....funding food pantries. Funding shelters. Maybe he was doing deeper transformative work somewhere, but he mostly looks like a rich guy doing the things that rich people think addressing poverty is about, not actually impacting systematic structures.

On top of that, he explicitly described himself as a "social moderate and strong fiscal conservative" some 15 years ago. And yeah, he is quite rich, just sold his house for $2.5 million before moving into the governor's residence.


Now, does that necessarily tell us how he'll govern? Like I said in my original statement, you can never really know. But there are plenty of legitimate reasons for someone with my priorities and worldview not to trust him. Why not engage honestly with those? Hopefully he'll do better in power.

Outside of reparations how would you impact poverty if you were in his position?


It seems like he's trying to address zoning and housing density as well as transportation.

 

[Pressure]

Outside of reparations how would you impact poverty if you were in his position?


It seems like he's trying to address zoning and housing density as well as transportation.

@Rhakim doesnt care about that. He said so in what you quoted. He’s more interested in the types of politicians more so than what they’ll achieve.

 

[FAH1223]

Outside of reparations how would you impact poverty if you were in his position?


It seems like he's trying to address zoning and housing density as well as transportation.

Back to Wes Moore,

If he can get the Red Line done in Baltimore, that'll be huge for econ development.

Conversely, expanding highways is terrible and goes against his own climate pledges.

 

[Pressure]

Back to Wes Moore,

If he can get the Red Line done in Baltimore, that'll be huge for econ development.

Conversely, expanding highways is terrible and goes against his own climate pledges.

How much of this is his hand being forced by VA beltway expansion?

 

[FAH1223]

How much of this is his hand being forced by VA beltway expansion?

That's a part.

The main thing needed is the American Legion Bridge needs updating, which no one can logically deny. But the rest of the proposals still lack adequate scope and study.

Plus, the state is going to have a budget shortfall in 2025. Federal funds are earmarked for it but how the state funds things remains to be seen. Cost overruns always happen wit these projects. Just look at the Purple Line which was supposed to be done in 2017 but didn't even start construction until 2019 and won't be finished until 2027..

 

[Professor Emeritus]

@Rhakim since you are speaking on poverty I want to get your thoughts on McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility

McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility

The economic state of Black America: What is and what could be

Black Americans face gaps in representation, wages, education, business ownership, and more. This comprehensive report looks at multiple economic realities Black Americans face and the opportunities in closing these racial gaps.

www.mckinsey.com

Do you think their remedies can be effective.

For the most part I agree with the report, though I think there are gaps. And they focused way more on problems than solutions, where they did mention solutions, they didn't really get into the details very much.


While none of the issues they pointed out were illegitimate, they wrote far more on employment inequality than on educational inequality, and I simply don't think there's any reasonable chance of fixing employment inequality unless you fix educational inequality first, especially at the K-12 level. There was one short section on the need to equalize K-12 funding, but far more than that needs to be done.

Strikingly, I didn't see a single thing on the report about residential segregation. They make some strong points about the fact that Black communities are underserved, but nothing about how Black people get segregated into those underserved neighborhoods in the first place.

I'm also not seeing very much in there regarding improving Black social capital. There was maybe one passing mention of mentoring, and talk about getting certain kinds of programs into Black communities. But i think the social capital gap is so large that it could deserve much more concentrated attention, and not just in employment-based areas but also shyt like relationship counseling, parenting, gang recruitment prevention and gang member rehabilitation, etc.

I think there was one brief mention of the need to better train/employ ex-felons, and otherwise nothing else about the justice system at all.

I don't recall them mentioning better mental health services anywhere, though perhaps you could assume that's included within improving health services in general. It really needs to be addressed independently though, because proper mental health networks are far more than hospital-type shyt.

Of course I'm a UBI fan, which they don't mention. But you could conceivably wrap it into their stated need to balance out tax credits more towards the lower earners.



I'm sure there's more I could bring in if I thought about it longer, I did read it pretty fast and they covered a ton of ground. But I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't see any outright fallacies in the report, nor did I immediately notice any "solutions" that would turn into something counterproductive. Where they did propose solutions, I'd largely applaud the efforts. But, of course, how they would actually pull it off is another question.

 

[Voice of Reason]

For the most part I agree with the report, though I think there are gaps. And they focused way more on problems than solutions, where they did mention solutions, they didn't really get into the details very much.


While none of the issues they pointed out were illegitimate, they wrote far more on employment inequality than on educational inequality, and I simply don't think there's any reasonable chance of fixing employment inequality unless you fix educational inequality first, especially at the K-12 level. There was one short section on the need to equalize K-12 funding, but far more than that needs to be done.

Strikingly, I didn't see a single thing on the report about residential segregation. They make some strong points about the fact that Black communities are underserved, but nothing about how Black people get segregated into those underserved neighborhoods in the first place.

I'm also not seeing very much in there regarding improving Black social capital. There was maybe one passing mention of mentoring, and talk about getting certain kinds of programs into Black communities. But i think the social capital gap is so large that it could deserve much more concentrated attention, and not just in employment-based areas but also shyt like relationship counseling, parenting, gang recruitment prevention and gang member rehabilitation, etc.

I think there was one brief mention of the need to better train/employ ex-felons, and otherwise nothing else about the justice system at all.

I don't recall them mentioning better mental health services anywhere, though perhaps you could assume that's included within improving health services in general. It really needs to be addressed independently though, because proper mental health networks are far more than hospital-type shyt.

Of course I'm a UBI fan, which they don't mention. But you could conceivably wrap it into their stated need to balance out tax credits more towards the lower earners.



I'm sure there's more I could bring in if I thought about it longer, I did read it pretty fast and they covered a ton of ground. But I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't see any outright fallacies in the report, nor did I immediately notice any "solutions" that would turn into something counterproductive. Where they did propose solutions, I'd largely applaud the efforts. But, of course, how they would actually pull it off is another question.

They spoke on the education component on this blog post

Advancing racial equity in US pre-K–12 education

Six actions could help advance racial equity in US education by closing racial gaps in Pre-K-12 academic achievement.

www.mckinsey.com

They have a whole blog where they touch on different topics


I might make a thread about it.

 

[Silky Johnson]

Wes Moore spent his formative years on Gun Hill Road so he's aight with me

 

[Professor Emeritus]

They spoke on the education component on this blog post

Advancing racial equity in US pre-K–12 education

Six actions could help advance racial equity in US education by closing racial gaps in Pre-K-12 academic achievement.

www.mckinsey.com

They have a whole blog where they touch on different topics


I might make a thread about it.

The references aren't working on my phone, but from what I read in the text, I like what they have to say. I was especially impressed that they addressed segregation in point #6, that was brave on their part.

The only point I found potentially troublesome was #1. I'm not against phonics, and in fact all of the reading programs I oversee myself under our organization would clearly be defined as phonics programs. And some of the non-phonics stuff that has gotten into schools is fukking stupid. However, just saying "phonics" versus "not phonics", or "evidence-based" versus "not evidence-based", is not enough. Some really shytty programs have been pushed on schools in the name of evidence-based phonics. Evidence-based research needs to take into account long-term outcomes and not just the immediate ability to pass standardized tests, it has to consider softer outcomes like developing a love of reading, a love of school, and gaining self-directed learning skills. Perhaps the research they refer to adequately covers that, but I can't read the links.


Missing from the report was any mention of structural change in instruction outside of that phonics part. I can understand why they left it out, because the field of instructional reform is so controversial and difficult to prove due to lack of appropriate comparative studies and agreement on metrics that they were better off not wading into something outside their expertise. Personally, though, I have strong feelings on a lot of changes that need to be made.

There was nothing about eliminating tracking, which has a massive detrimental impact on many Black students.

There was nothing on reducing the amount of standardized testing that Black students are subjected to, or reinstituting the broader curriculum (art, music, home ec, even recess) that has been denied to many of them. Of course, again, maybe they had to leave it out cause we're talking about "softer" skills and long-term outcomes that are difficult to measure.

There was nothing about reforming disciplinary procedures in Black schools. Again, maybe because there's isn't enough objective study and some disagreement over what constitutes ideal results. But this is a HUGE issue, because poor disciplinary procedures can destroy a lot of young lives on one end of the spectrum, or make school untenably disrupted on the other end.... and just compromising with half-measures doesnt work either. Unfortunately, the current debate seems to mostly revolve around whether or not you suspend/expel students, which doesn't address the root issues at all.

I would also have emphasized greater teacher empowerment and collaboration in order to improve teacher retention behind mere salary bonuses.

And I have some strong feelings about the manner in which summative grading and tests are used in the classroom, but that's far too radical for a report like this.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

This is nonsense. You’ve tried to hand wave away my opinions and the opinions of @88m3 and @wire28 because you don’t believe we can speak on the low income struggles because we have good jobs.

Bullshyt. Whenever you have offered actual opinions and arguments, I have addressed them in detail. On a couple occasions, I have noticed that some of the same people who push policies or politicians that favor the rich over the poor happen to be in that first category themselves. But I have never once stated that your position defines the value of your contribution, or used your position in substitution for an actual discussion on policy. There are plenty of people with "good jobs" who also push good policies. Three of my greatest heroes in global anti-poverty work are fukking doctors, and two of them are close personal friends.

So I do take exception when I see you point to fields that we work in as not fields you target. It’s bad faith, but it even more bad faith that you refuse to actually put your theories to test of where you think a guy was to where he is today.

It's not "bad faith" to decline to enter a completely different discussion that I have no knowledge or opinion in. You and Napoleon lied about me and my beliefs about Moore pre-governor, back when I spent a lot of time learning about him. That's what I was addressing, and you refused to even though you're the one who started it.

Instead, you deflected to his time in office, something I don't know anything about because I don't follow Maryland politics and he's only been in office 7 months, which isn't nearly enough time to evaluate someone on. I'd rather let the brehs there speak on that, and wait at least a couple years to evaluate myself. I'm not going to do a shytload of research about a topic that doesn't interest me and holds no current relevance to my life just to win a coli argument.

Ironically, you weren't willing to either, which is why you insisted on other people to research Moore's record rather than doing it yourself. As usual, you prefer to be minimally informed with the least effort and then just drop your hot take.

The problem you’re running into here is you’re so concerned with attempting to win every argument that you lose track of the shot you say when you get frustrated. This here is another example.

I’ve now asked you going on 4 times to speak on what Wes Moore is doing and you’re refusing because you’re not interested. Either because your theories are wrong or that’s never what this is about — an objective critique on Wes Moore.

You're talking in circles. You claim I need to win every argument, but then get upset that I won't bow down and argue with you on a topic neither of us have any personal knowledge or investment in?

I read Wes Moore's book and looked into his life story because I'm always searching for inspirational Black books and role models for students. He failed for me on that account. I didn't argue for or against him before I had done that work, and I'm not going to argue for or against him on things he does that are outside that work. I'm only going to comment on what I actually know.

You’ve expressed numerous times this site isn’t good for your mental health and you’re going back down that same path you did previous times when you needed to take a break.

Posting non stop arguing over nothing from the middle of the night through mid day.

But let me remind you again, I don’t actually care about your ruminations.

As a philosophy and computer science major most of what you do is see through. You’re good at research, crafting arguments, but that’s where it ends.

That's four straight bad faith arguments in a row, including two outright falsehoods.

The most hilarious line is "but that's where it ends." That's where.... what ends? You believe my only skills in life are doing research and crafting arguments, and you know that I have no other skills or knowledge on these subjects because of message board posts? And you determine that while discussing subjects you have zero experience in? I have quite objective evidence from 3 different fields that your claim is untrue, from prestigious awards to published peer-reviewed scientific research to actual on-the-ground results. But you know nothing of that, nor due you care, because you were just looking to troll the argument anyway.