Crying at a daycare

I acknowledge that we as a community must work to make all areas safer,
but until some huge strides are made in that respect, I don't think
living
in a non-high-crime neighborhood is a frivolous reason for both parents
to
work out of the house.

One other consideration: Housing costs as a percent of income has risen
dramatically in the past decade or so. The traditional ratio was 25% of
income to housing, but people now regularly spend over 50% in some areas,
due to the combination of increasing rents (due to higher property taxes
and landlord gouging) and a stagnant income level.

the situations in the different countries are clearly very different, whilst
we would probably be slightly better off if I worked, it really would be
only slightly and that tiny amount extra would not be enough to move us out
of our area, which whilst not a bad area considering things nationally, it
is the most deprived area of our city.

Cheers

Anne

Chookie wrote:
In article .com,
"Caledonia" wrote:

I'm not sure how police corruption ties into drive-by
shootings...without knowing (much), I'd say that police corruption is
no more or less present here than in other countries.

Er, open selling of drugs, and firefights in broad daylight as mentioned in
Donna's post.

Again, I'm not seeing it as police corruption. Maybe not enough police
(not enough money, yada yada), but corruption?

I think -- again,
with little background -- that the US's gun control is less stringent
(and in many cases, I applaud this, esp. w/r/t warrantless searches)
than in Australia. Dunno.

AFAIK we can't be searched without a warrant either; is that what you mean?

Yep -- just goes to show that my knowledge of your country is not only
limited, but wrong

The restrictions here are on the *types* of guns that can be owned. Handguns
have always been very strictly regulated (for historical reasons stemming from
penal colony days) and most other weapons are now restricted. I think
semiautomatic guns are now limited to professional pig shooters (feral pigs
are very nasty) and police.

I also know that there are neighborhoods
where there's a lack of police presence (and a lack of jobs, and
younameit, coupled with more violence) -- but aren't there camps in
Australia with the same issues?

Yes, but these are not places you end up in simply by not having two incomes.
Those Aboriginal camps are remote, riddled with alcoholism and
petrol-sniffing, and the violence is very personal and endemic -- it's rape,
sexual assault of children, even infants, assault of wives, and
stabbings/bashings when the men get into fights. Part of it does seem to be
an absence of police, but then there's an absence of most services in those
areas.

Whereas if I am to take the earlier post seriously, *you* can end up amid open
warfare and blatant drug-selling simply by moving to a poorer part of town.
We just don't have that. Our drug lords tend to shoot each other, not
passers-by.

Okay, so our shooters are not skilled. (And I often wonder if some of
that *is* true -- I've seen kids -- relatives, even -- mimicing the
'gun on its side' position that you see in rap videos, and -- heavens
-- wanted to stop them and say that it's a *MOVIE*. It's BAD FORM.
Agh.)

But seriously, looking at non-subsidized housing in a poorer part of
Boston which has had its share of violent crime (Fields Corner -- I
used to live there), I can find a single room (shared kit, bath, LR --
it's a SRO boarding house) for $130/week, and a *single apartment* for
$650/month, heat and utilities not included (so let's say, $720, as a
very conservative estimate, given winter heating costs). Those are the
least expensive non-subsidized places I could find online, looking in
the metro Boston area and ignoring the suburbs. Minimum wage in MA is
$6.75 -- for a family of 3, you'd be under the federal poverty level
(and hence, would be subsidized) with an annual pre-tax salary of
$14580. Let's say it's not minimum, but $9.75/hr. At that, your
take-home monthly pay (15% federal tax bracket, 5% MA state, 6.25% SS,
1.45% Medicare), would be in the range of $1260, leaving you about $550
month for everything else after rent, which seems moderately do-able
for 3 people, one being small. If you drive, you're in trouble, as
Fields Corner has a high insurance rate (high crime = high auto
insurance), and gas prices -- to us at least -- are silly now.
Groceries there are about 20% higher than they are in the affluent
western suburbs (and grocery stores are few and far between, and tiny)
-- but you'd have to be able to drive to get to a less-expensive store,
so I'd budget about $400/month for groceries, assuming you don't eat
any produce. As I remember, I didn't *want* to eat the produce I saw
for sale. Maybe $50/month for incidentals (bleach, detergent, soap,
diapers, formula), if you're buying on the grey market; $75-100/month
if you're not.

So the long and short of it is, yes, with only 1 income and living in a
not-so-great urban neighborhood (for a household of 3) at an
above-minimum wage job ($3/hr minimum), you can make a go of it and
even have a whopping $50-100 a month left over with a few big
assumptions (all donated clothes, warm winter, no car, grey market
shopping, no transportation expenses, no health care expenses at all,
no produce.)

Given this, it might be better to go for the second income -- but
again, unless the second income is a real winner, and the daycare is
reasonable and reasonably cheap, it's a tricky trade-off. (Do these
calcs in any way compare to life there?)

We have had a spate of underworld killings in Melbourne -- 28
murders in seven years, in a city of 3.6 million. That's what we'd call
rampant gangland violence. And while our drug problem is sizeable, you won't
see deals going on in the street in daylight.

Maybe we have fewer hours of daylight here? (Okay, I'm a believer that
if you can't muster a laugh at some situations which are truly truly
bad, then, well, you're *really* in trouble.)

Caledonia

In article ,
"PattyMomVA" wrote:

Lawlessness does not go hand-in-hand with police corruption. Is that the
only situation in which you can imagine criminals activity? In the case of
police corruption? Like they're taking bribes from criminals?

Frankly, that is the only way I can understand a situation like the one TFlynn
describes. 150 murders, mostly by gun and linked to gangs, in a city of 1
million, I find quite astonishing. Sydney has 4 million people. We had 49
murders here last year, most connected to domestic violence, and only 8
murders involved a firearm. That is, Milwaukee's (if that's the one?) murder
rate is 12 times that of Sydney's. Can you see why I might think police
corruption is a necessary condition for such statistics?

Here, there are indeed areas where drug deals go on in the daylight and
innocent people, including children, are caught in the crossfire of drive-by
shootings and the like. I suspect the local police force is underfunded and
stretched thin. They also may not get community help, such as in witnesses
not coming forth for fear of retaliation. I don't assume the police are
corrupt.

When people are regularly shooting at each other outside SCHOOLS, for Heaven's
sake, they plainly think they can do whatever they want. I hope that your
police force is not corrupt, and perhaps it is just a lack of funding. But
the next question is why the rest of the community puts up with such
underfunding of the police that their children (or the children of
single-income families) cannot be educated in peace and safety.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"Parenthood is like the modern stone washing process for denim jeans. You may
start out crisp, neat and tough, but you end up pale, limp and wrinkled."
Kerry Cue

On Tue, 23 May 2006 20:56:52 +1000, Chookie
wrote:
When people are regularly shooting at each other outside SCHOOLS, for Heaven's
sake, they plainly think they can do whatever they want. I hope that your
police force is not corrupt, and perhaps it is just a lack of funding. But
the next question is why the rest of the community puts up with such
underfunding of the police that their children (or the children of
single-income families) cannot be educated in peace and safety.

The more crime there is, the lower the socio-economic status. The poor
are who commits these crimes, (gangs are more prevelant in those
areas). They are less educated also. So of course they aren't going to
be pushing for more police. The idea that education/safety/moving up
in the world isn't important is passed from generation to generation
so that nothing gets better.
Marie

On Tue, 23 May 2006, Chookie wrote:
I hope that your
police force is not corrupt, and perhaps it is just a lack of funding. But
the next question is why the rest of the community puts up with such
underfunding of the police that their children (or the children of
single-income families) cannot be educated in peace and safety.

Basically, in many cities, policing is torn between providing "quality of
life" coverage in the nicer neighborhoods -- noise disturbance, speeding
tickets, maybe shoplifting -- with violent crime apprehension in the
poorer neighborhoods.

The reactionary republican who used to live next door summed it up this
way: "If they all kill each other, it's no big loss." Of course, this
from a guy who has never been on welfare and who owns property in the
inner city.

Taxes have been increasing ridiculously largely because of health care
costs for employees. Services have been frozen for *years* in many
departments. We have finally qualified for some federal grants to
increase our police recruitment and training.

I apologize for dragging the discussion away from the topic we should be
discussing, through.

My 2 year old has started greeting my breasts with "I love you, boobies!"

"Marie" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 23 May 2006 20:56:52 +1000, Chookie
wrote:
When people are regularly shooting at each other outside SCHOOLS, for
Heaven's
sake, they plainly think they can do whatever they want. I hope that
your
police force is not corrupt, and perhaps it is just a lack of funding.
But
the next question is why the rest of the community puts up with such
underfunding of the police that their children (or the children of
single-income families) cannot be educated in peace and safety.

The more crime there is, the lower the socio-economic status. The poor
are who commits these crimes, (gangs are more prevelant in those
areas). They are less educated also. So of course they aren't going to
be pushing for more police. The idea that education/safety/moving up
in the world isn't important is passed from generation to generation
so that nothing gets better.
Marie
In the case of my former school, the city almost asked for what they got.
See, when the federal government built the interstate through Memphis, they
left a major road which had been the east-west way through the city and
across the bridge intact. As a result, there was a large, relatively
unpatrolled, non-interstate route available, and it became very, very easy
to commit a crime and just jump on the road and go. Then, when project
housing came into vogue, two very large projects were built in the area.
They've since been decentralized, but there's still a ton of government
housing and section 8 eligible housing (section 8 is a program where
landlords get subsidized to allow low income people to rent their
properties, and usually landlords will only do so if they can't get renters
who can fully pay the rent, so often you get the affect of slightly spread
out housing projects). There are a lot of vacancies, especially in former
business/commercial spaces, including one old school building which has been
allowed to sit vacant for about 15 years (it is finally being torn down this
year)-and those attract squatters and turn into crack houses and meth
production centers.

Effectively, the city created a high density area with a high low income
population, did not provide the police coverage needed to keep it under
control, and gave a quick getaway to anyone who the police did try to
apprehend. Then, they built a school for all of the project kids in the
middle of it.

For many kids in this situation, a school is an island of calm in their
lives and about the only stable part of their life-which is why I taught in
this neighborhood until my last pregnancy. These kids need so much because
their lives are so unstable, and in most cases the parents feel just as
trapped as the kids are. Most are pathetically young women (many 30 yr old
grandparents) with no male in their life who is at all reliable, trying to
raise multiple children. They don't have the education needed to get out of
the area or the transportation to get to even a minimum wage job, and since
the federal government limits the amount of time a parent can stay home with
a young child, end up having babies every few years like clockwork. Most of
them would like their child to do well in school and get out of the area,
but they honestly have no idea how to help. During the years I taught there,
our average entering kindergartener had the language skills expected of a 2
yr old. At 18 months old, I believe my daughter would beat most of our
entering kindergarteners on the concepts of print test, because she knows
which direction a book goes, which way words go and at least some of her
letter names and sounds.

One thing I've noticed in the US, vs some of the places I've visited outside
of the country, is that there's no pride of place if you're not paying for
your housing yourself. I have an unerring "gift" of getting lost and ending
up in one of the worst neighborhoods everywhere we go, and everywhere in the
US, it screams "Ghetto" or, if you're in the southwest, possibly "Barrio".
However, in San Juan, we fell into areas with government funded projects,
and it was very different. Clean, children playing, flowers planted, etc.
The same happened in Mexico, where many people live in situations which
would make project housing luxurious-but there was always beauty and pride.
I've read a lot of books on generational poverty, but I don't quite
understand why so many people seem to lose that pride and see anything given
to them as something to abuse, from a pencil at school to their home.

Marie wrote:
On Tue, 23 May 2006 20:56:52 +1000, Chookie
wrote:
When people are regularly shooting at each other outside SCHOOLS, for Heaven's
sake, they plainly think they can do whatever they want. I hope that your
police force is not corrupt, and perhaps it is just a lack of funding. But
the next question is why the rest of the community puts up with such
underfunding of the police that their children (or the children of
single-income families) cannot be educated in peace and safety.

The more crime there is, the lower the socio-economic status. The poor
are who commits these crimes, (gangs are more prevelant in those
areas). They are less educated also. So of course they aren't going to
be pushing for more police.

Just to clarify, you mean to say that gangs would not be pushing for
more police presence, not that poor people would not be asking for more
police and safer neighborhoods, right?

Caledonia

On 23 May 2006, Caledonia wrote:
Just to clarify, you mean to say that gangs would not be pushing for
more police presence, not that poor people would not be asking for more
police and safer neighborhoods, right?

Gangs would not be pushing for police presence, but also many times poor
people feel disenfranchised by the "system" and they may not formally
request more police either. A few incidents have happened in my town that
indicate that the "Stop Snitching" movement is making a toehold here.
Pretty nasty.

T Flynn wrote:
On 23 May 2006, Caledonia wrote:
Just to clarify, you mean to say that gangs would not be pushing for
more police presence, not that poor people would not be asking for more
police and safer neighborhoods, right?

Gangs would not be pushing for police presence, but also many times poor
people feel disenfranchised by the "system" and they may not formally
request more police either. A few incidents have happened in my town that
indicate that the "Stop Snitching" movement is making a toehold here.
Pretty nasty.

Let me rephrase my earlier message: if people felt that asking for more
police and safer neighborhoods would not subject them to additional
violence, they would.

I think a part of the "Stop Snitchin'" movement is a vapid fashion
cross-over, and a part (larger?) is pretty effective (and seemingly
publicly 'okay') witness intimidation. Sigh. I *like* the ACLU, I just
can't agree with them all the time...

Caledonia

On 23 May 2006 16:49:31 -0700, "Caledonia"
wrote:
Let me rephrase my earlier message: if people felt that asking for more
police and safer neighborhoods would not subject them to additional
violence, they would.

I guess...but a large part of those people in those bad neighborhoods
*are* the criminals. No one seems to care enough to want it to
change... just keep getting pregnant at an early age, or getting into
drugs, or stealing...

I think a part of the "Stop Snitchin'" movement is a vapid fashion
cross-over, and a part (larger?) is pretty effective (and seemingly
publicly 'okay') witness intimidation. Sigh. I *like* the ACLU, I just
can't agree with them all the time...

Caledonia