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Post by Red Impact on Jan 29, 2011 18:02:30 GMT -5
What coercion? What the hell do you think taxes for schools and other crap is. I'm forced to pay for other peoples kids to go to school while I don't even have kids. If I don't I get kidnapped and locked in a cage. This is getting too political do I'm out. You're living in the wrong country, buddy. I've been paying Social Security taxes my entire working life, and by the time I retire I will never see any of that money again (the SS Fund will be long bankrupt by today's resource-hogging elderly), it's understood that the young and old are given extra at the expense of average taxpaying adults in this country in the interests of progress. If given the choice, I'd rather just pay for schools and education rather than social security taxes, since people should just learn to save their own money themselves for retirement. There's also the positive external benefits from having good schools around, even if you don't have kids of your own. Schools have proven essential for the communities around them, and good schools improve the areas, where bad schools harm them. In economics we call it an externality, the benefit (or harm) that effects people beyond those who directly use them. We can't pick and choose what taxes we want to pay unless they're a sales tax. But everyone has a choice, no matter how much they might want to deny it, to communities or lifestyles to meet whatever their personal desires are. The fact that society doesn't share those same desires and change itself to meet them doesn't make it extortion.
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Fiddleford H. McGucket
El Dandy
My Mind's been gone for 30-odd years! Can't Break what's already broken!
Posts: 8,748
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Post by Fiddleford H. McGucket on Jan 29, 2011 18:17:48 GMT -5
Ok......
She committed Fraud in falsifying documents........Crime.
She Wanted to send her kids to a "better" school......NOT a Crime.
The why and how are largely irrelevent.....She committed the crime of Fraud (Which in this case the state, as was thier right given the amount of money "lost" by having non-local, non-citizens attending a publicly funded school)
Is the State in the wrong for prosecuting her? No, nor is SHE in the wrong for WANTING her kids to have a better education or expecting that the school provide it.
The sad fact is this though.....Financially Poor schools are also Academically poor schools.
You collect a Tax based on a percentage of the wages paid.....that Tax goes to pay for basic services (in this case education). When the Tax Base is lessened by Low Income and (Given that the "Official" School District was in a noted Higher Crime Area) an increased Police spending less money is available to go to the already hurting school.
Compounding the problem is the fact that people DON'T want to fund underperforming schools. If the school is doing poorly academically, the last thing people want to do is throw "good" money after the percieved "bad" even if that funding would go to necessary academic programs.
The "Good" school on the other hand is apparently in a more affluent neighborhood, with lower Crime, and as is the usually the case in the Rich School/Poor School dilemma, is predominantly white.
I'm not one to do the "Please Think of the Children" spiel....but seriously people.....We're talking about the ONE thing that nobody should ever take away and that's a child's education. Should the lady have gone through the proper channels to get her kids the better, safer education they deserved? Yes.....Yes she should have. Will she have that opportunity to do so? I seriously doubt it.
The kids deserve the BEST education that they can recieve, not the closest, or the best that they can afford. It's just that simple. The public education system is set up to give everyone the chance to be educated in thier community, BY thier community and eventually FOR thier community, but it shouldn't be as some have said a prison to keep you chained to the poverty and insecurity of that community.
If there's a VIABLE option within the public education system and a valid reason why your "Community School" doesn't meet your needs, then you should have the option of going to the school that does, with "Reasonable" accomodations made if need be.
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Jay Peas 42
El Dandy
Totally flips out ALL the time.
Is looking forward to a Nation of Domination Kwannza Special.
Posts: 8,329
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Post by Jay Peas 42 on Jan 29, 2011 21:47:23 GMT -5
Re; Wrong: Technically, Wrong can mean either Immoral or Illegal, and just because something is one does not mean something is the other.
Re: Fraud: Technically, one woman isn't a problem. The problem comes from everyone who wants to send their kids to a better public school district, who isn't eligible to do so. It's a free rider issue. The problem is, this is America, we are a nation where nobody is above the law, and we must follow the law as long as it remain on us.
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nate5054
Hank Scorpio
Lucky to be alive in the Chris Jericho Era
Posts: 7,013
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Post by nate5054 on Jan 30, 2011 5:16:10 GMT -5
As much as the title can be spun, she still did commit an act of fraud for it. She wasn't paying taxes for the school district she was sending her students to, and was lying to get them admitted to the district. Just saying. I guess, but the school hiring a PI for it seems way overboard.
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Post by Jay Carroll on Jan 30, 2011 12:50:09 GMT -5
I honestly don't have a problem with the mother in question being punished. I do have a problem with the overzealous nature of the punishment. It's a common occurrence where I'm from for parents and kids to collaborate to get their kids into schools they aren't technically supposed to go to (not that that makes it right) and I'm pretty sure that it happens in plenty of other places as well. Usually when it does happen, and the parents/kids are found to be in the wrong, they are just tossed out of the school district, not prosecuted to the (extremely) full extent of the law.
This seems at best like a case of killing a waterbug with a sledgehammer just because you have access to said sledgehammer.
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