KC closing half its schools.

[R-Jack]

And my guess is 66% of that 17,000 is minority.
A couple of the better High schools we used to compete in Football and Baseball with back in the 80's are now 90% + minority.
They went totally to hell - no one I know would send their kids there

In other words....


Stanley Pickkkle was RIGHT!

This is KC we are talking about. Out there "minority" is just a fancy way of saying "literate."

[poptart]

Without advancements in medicine, planning, education, America would be a much less prosperous nation. Do we both decry the irritants and parasites of our society? Of course...but doesn't the body itself rally to overcome those and strengthen in the process?

What are you babbling about?

I'm not against advancement in medicine, planning or education.

I AM against the fed gov operating outside the boundaries it is allowed BY LAW.


The people are supposed to OWN the government, not visa versa.

The whole thing has gradually been turned on it's head, and it's to the loss of the people and the gain of a very small minority of ... "elite."

[Terry in Crapchester]

Cheers PSU, just curious. I loosely follow the trials of upstate New York as a soap opera, it's identical to Scott's description of KC and it always seems to boil down to a tax base.
Some pull it off and some don't and what makes it interesting is that it's the polar opposite from the rest of western city centres, Canada included. People just pour into the city, you can't keep them out - so the money has to come from somewhere.

I can't speak for KC in this regard, but Upstate NY cities and towns have suffered from a combination of governmental incompetence and from being "company" towns utterly too dependent on a few major employers for their job base. And when I say governmental incompetence, I am being utterly too kind.

I'm sure you're familiar with the 40 million dollar "Fast Ferry" that our city first subsidized and eventually bought when the private firm went belly up, only to cancel ferry service 6 months after closing on the biggest white elephant ever. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

The latest boondoggle has our county Executive trying to swindle the Local, state and US taxpayers for (I am seriously not making this shit up) 250 million dollars to build a combination bus terminal, performing arts center and community college campus. Now, on the face of it, these are all nice enough things to have. But the performing arts center is essentially the same size and would serve the same function as the already existing Auditorium Theater that is 1/2 mile away, the bus terminal is even more useless as it would be so much more efficient were it to be merged with the Amtrak station 5 blocks north and the community college has all the room to expand that it ever would need using the existing downtown campus in the Sibley building. Fortunately for local taxpayers, this idiocy has been killed thanks to our local political leaders inability to agree on exactly how the ill gotten loot was to be divided.

And of course there is the COMIDA boondoggle, where taxpayers give tax breaks to businesses to ostensibly create jobs, only to see those same jobs disappear later or never get created in the first place. And there's the 13,000 seat soccer stadium build in the middle of one of the worst neighborhoods in Rochester with parking for maybe half the full capacity and absolutely no money set aside for neighborhood projects to perhaps make the place not look like a fucking war zone. And the War Memorial errr "Blue Cross Arena" renovation done with used seats from an arena in Cleveland to the tune of 20 million dollars. And so on and so on.

Meanwhile Kodak has become a holding company for intellectual property more than a company that actually produces any product of their own. We used to have 60,000 people employed by Kodak in 1980. Now we have 8,000. Ditto on a smaller scale for Xerox, who should own the fucking world but for the fact they gave away their research on GUI based operating systems to a couple of pissant startups call Microsoft and Apple. And what do we get to replace these corporate behemoths? Wegmans? Paychex? They're OK, but they don't employ anywhere near the workforce Kodak and Xerox used to. Same with Paetec, the company whose name used to grace that ghetto soccer stadium and whose CEO is probably the most visionary civic leader we have.

But hey, on the plus side, there's hardly any traffic during "rush hour".

Good analysis, although you missed a few points that make the situation even worse . . .

1. Given that Wegmans is one of the industries that have stepped up to replace Kodak, Xerox, and to a lesser extent, Bausch & Lomb, there's no comparison between what Wegmans pays its employees and what the others pay theirs. That's not a knock on Wegmans, but merely pointing out that jobs at supermarkets don't pay what Kodak, Xerox and Bausch & Lomb pay.

2. Along those lines, UR -- a private institution with relatively small enrollment -- is now the region's largest employer. In that regard, Rochester is not worlds apart from South Bend, IN, where ND is the region's largest employer (although, to be totally fair, much of the UR employment numbers are due to Strong Memorial Hospital, which serves the greater community and not merely the university).

3. The dumbasses here actually think that competition between the city and the suburbs, rather than regional cooperation as a whole, is a good thing.

Btw, it was on the news this morning that the Rochester City School District is also considering significant school closings.

[Rack Fu]

Cheers PSU, just curious. I loosely follow the trials of upstate New York as a soap opera, it's identical to Scott's description of KC and it always seems to boil down to a tax base.
Some pull it off and some don't and what makes it interesting is that it's the polar opposite from the rest of western city centres, Canada included. People just pour into the city, you can't keep them out - so the money has to come from somewhere.

I can't speak for KC in this regard, but Upstate NY cities and towns have suffered from a combination of governmental incompetence and from being "company" towns utterly too dependent on a few major employers for their job base. And when I say governmental incompetence, I am being utterly too kind.

I'm sure you're familiar with the 40 million dollar "Fast Ferry" that our city first subsidized and eventually bought when the private firm went belly up, only to cancel ferry service 6 months after closing on the biggest white elephant ever. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

The latest boondoggle has our county Executive trying to swindle the Local, state and US taxpayers for (I am seriously not making this shit up) 250 million dollars to build a combination bus terminal, performing arts center and community college campus. Now, on the face of it, these are all nice enough things to have. But the performing arts center is essentially the same size and would serve the same function as the already existing Auditorium Theater that is 1/2 mile away, the bus terminal is even more useless as it would be so much more efficient were it to be merged with the Amtrak station 5 blocks north and the community college has all the room to expand that it ever would need using the existing downtown campus in the Sibley building. Fortunately for local taxpayers, this idiocy has been killed thanks to our local political leaders inability to agree on exactly how the ill gotten loot was to be divided.

And of course there is the COMIDA boondoggle, where taxpayers give tax breaks to businesses to ostensibly create jobs, only to see those same jobs disappear later or never get created in the first place. And there's the 13,000 seat soccer stadium build in the middle of one of the worst neighborhoods in Rochester with parking for maybe half the full capacity and absolutely no money set aside for neighborhood projects to perhaps make the place not look like a fucking war zone. And the War Memorial errr "Blue Cross Arena" renovation done with used seats from an arena in Cleveland to the tune of 20 million dollars. And so on and so on.

Meanwhile Kodak has become a holding company for intellectual property more than a company that actually produces any product of their own. We used to have 60,000 people employed by Kodak in 1980. Now we have 8,000. Ditto on a smaller scale for Xerox, who should own the fucking world but for the fact they gave away their research on GUI based operating systems to a couple of pissant startups call Microsoft and Apple. And what do we get to replace these corporate behemoths? Wegmans? Paychex? They're OK, but they don't employ anywhere near the workforce Kodak and Xerox used to. Same with Paetec, the company whose name used to grace that ghetto soccer stadium and whose CEO is probably the most visionary civic leader we have.

But hey, on the plus side, there's hardly any traffic during "rush hour".

Well said. A similar situation has plagued Syracuse for the last 25 years. I think Syracuse suffers from far more government incompetence than the Buffalo/Rochester side of the state. Blue collar kind of town that has watched its manufacturing and industrial base virtually shrivel up to nothing. Syracuse's answer to everything economic was to build a giant fucking mall. When that didn't cure things, they have decided to build the giant fucking mall even fucking bigger. Billions of dollars pumped into a place that surely brings in some tax revenue but what exactly did it do for employment? It gave (and will give during expansion) a bunch of blue collar workers and contractors temporary work while the joint was being built. Then it provided thousands of people shitty, low paying retail jobs. Why bother doing what they need to do to attract companies who function in an actual industry that's growing like tech or professional services? Why bother un-fucking the local government to help foster homegrown businesses? Why bother addressing the real reasons that an entire generation of young people moved away from that place because there was literally nothing to keep us there from an employment perspective? I guess the "build the mall and they will come" philosophy was just that brilliant.

I graduated from college in 1992 and hightailed it to Raleigh, North Carolina as fast as I could. My parents just couldn't understand why I wanted to bolt at the time. Didn't take long for them to figure out why.

Or it could have been all the snow.

[Screw_Michigan]

The KC school closures are but the vanguard of inner city implosion all across the country. If it can happen here, it can and will happen everywhere.

Uh, not here.

[Screw_Michigan]

I graduated from college in 1992 and hightailed it to Raleigh, North Carolina as fast as I could.

Why Raleigh? BTW, rack Gtown.

[Smackie Chan]

other than the Broncos and Cuda, I'm hard pressed to think of anything negative about Colorado

Well, there is this...

[smackaholic]

[ And the War Memorial errr "Blue Cross Arena" renovation done with used seats from an arena in Cleveland to the tune of 20 million dollars.

you know you are really down on your luck when you have to take cleveland hand me downs.

[BSmack]

[ And the War Memorial errr "Blue Cross Arena" renovation done with used seats from an arena in Cleveland to the tune of 20 million dollars.

you know you are really down on your luck when you have to take cleveland hand me downs.

You ain't kidding. But hey, we're not Detroit!

[Screw_Michigan]

If that's all you got, I'm glad I don't live there.

[Truman]

...Either way, though - downtown living space is going pretty well in pgh.

It ain't so bad here in KC either, PSU. An explosion of new lofts and condos has seen downtown residency nearly double within the last decade. Course, KC Stay Puft Marshmallow Man would have you believe that those folks are all squatting in dumpaters and rail cars.

To anyone who gives a flying rat's ass outside of a hundred-mile radius of this town, there's a good read published by Cato Institute back in 19-freaking-98 that lends perspective to the KCMSD's current situation.

Bottom Line: Whitey left (no pun intended, Wags), property taxes went to shit, and an Activist Federal Judge was hell-bent on proving that he could raise test scores by rolling train-loads of cash into this black hole (pun intended, Wags).

Rack John Covington for having the cubes to trim the fat, stiff the union, and going all-Chris Christie on this failed experiment.

BTW, Scott: It wasn't just Harper and Haynes, Leiding and RBJ… EVERYBODY stomped Belton back then. :wink:

[JMak]

Truman, that was the case I was referring to yesterday. Ashcroft was involved defending the state from having to pour trucks of money into the school district ...

[Truman]

^^^^^^

True dat. Ciotti's analysis simply lets you know where the bodies are buried. Judge Clark is still Public Enema #1 to many in this town....

[PSUFAN]

I'm not against advancement in medicine, planning or education.

Speaking historically - how much advancement was spurred via stretching of what is defined in the constitution?

This reminds me of the Literal Interpretation of the bible discussion that we have had...

[Derron]

I can't speak for KC in this regard, but Upstate NY cities and towns have suffered from a combination of governmental incompetence and from being "company" towns utterly too dependent on a few major employers for their job base. And when I say governmental incompetence, I am being utterly too kind.

And so on and so on.

Hell has frozen over. Pigs are flying.

In all the years on all these boards, I never thought this day would come.

Welcome to the Republican party Bri....please bring some of your liberal friends with you and we can turn the governments rape of the taxpayers around. What exactly was it that made you leave the tax and spend party and come over to sanity ?

[Goober McTuber]

I can't speak for KC in this regard, but Upstate NY cities and towns have suffered from a combination of governmental incompetence and from being "company" towns utterly too dependent on a few major employers for their job base. And when I say governmental incompetence, I am being utterly too kind.

And so on and so on.

Hell has frozen over. Pigs are flying.

In all the years on all these boards, I never thought this day would come.

Welcome to the Republican party Bri....please bring some of your liberal friends with you and we can turn the governments rape of the taxpayers around. What exactly was it that made you leave the tax and spend party and come over to sanity ?

Equally rare? A Derron post with no mention of COCK.

[Terry in Crapchester]

I think Syracuse suffers from far more government incompetence than the Buffalo/Rochester side of the state.

At least in one regard, that is not true. The issue was baseball stadiums.

Both Rochester and Syracuse heard from the International League that their stadiums did not meet Class AAA standards in the early 1990's. Syracuse took all of about 20 minutes to approve a new stadium, agree on the site for a new stadium and begin construction.

Rochester was an entirely different story. The baseball stadium issue brought out all sorts of infighting, including at least 3 different proposed sites for the stadium, not to mention those who wanted merely to put another band-aid on Silver Stadium, and the "no money for a new stadium since it'll raise my taxes" crowd. Rochester finally got a new stadium, but only after enduring about 5 years of this b.s.

On the bright side, at least Rochester's stadium has a grass playing surface.

[Terry in Crapchester]

I can't speak for KC in this regard, but Upstate NY cities and towns have suffered from a combination of governmental incompetence and from being "company" towns utterly too dependent on a few major employers for their job base. And when I say governmental incompetence, I am being utterly too kind.

And so on and so on.

Hell has frozen over. Pigs are flying.

In all the years on all these boards, I never thought this day would come.

Welcome to the Republican party Bri....

:?

Except for the city of Rochester, the Republicans have controlled Monroe County pretty much nonstop for at least the last twenty years.

[BSmack]

Hell has frozen over. Pigs are flying.

In all the years on all these boards, I never thought this day would come.

Welcome to the Republican party Bri....please bring some of your liberal friends with you and we can turn the governments rape of the taxpayers around. What exactly was it that made you leave the tax and spend party and come over to sanity ?

Derron,

My assessment of Rochester area politicians is entirely non-partisan. Be they Democrat or Republican, the vast majority have been unmitigated disasters for as long as I've been alive. The 40 million dollar fast ferry fuckup? That was Democrat Bill Johnson's fuckup. The Renaissance Square disaster? The was Republican Maggie "I used to read the news on TV" Brooks' clusterfuck. The various stadium clusterfucks? Well you can blame both parties for those. Comida, the agency that gives money to businesses for no new jobs in return? That's a whole succession of GOP county execs working to give kickbacks to their contributors.

I could go on in Dinsdalian fashion for the rest of the day on the backwards ass, incestuous corruption that is Rochester/Monroe County politics and I'd barely scrape the surface. That's why I haven't worked for a single campaign since 1997. Fuck that shit. I love my hometown, but I can count on one hand the number of local politicians I've met who are worth a warm bucket of piss.

[Derron]

I can't speak for KC in this regard, but Upstate NY cities and towns have suffered from a combination of governmental incompetence and from being "company" towns utterly too dependent on a few major employers for their job base. And when I say governmental incompetence, I am being utterly too kind.

And so on and so on.

Hell has frozen over. Pigs are flying.

In all the years on all these boards, I never thought this day would come.

Welcome to the Republican party Bri....please bring some of your liberal friends with you and we can turn the governments rape of the taxpayers around. What exactly was it that made you leave the tax and spend party and come over to sanity ?

Equally rare? A Derron post with no mention of COCK.

Not so in your case however.

[Van]

Derron, your response there actually means that it's not rare to see a post from Goobs which includes no mention of cocks.

I'm thinking that he'd agree with you.

[Goober McTuber]

Derron, your response there actually means that it's not rare to see a post from Goobs which includes no mention of cocks.

I'm thinking that he'd agree with you.

There's a first time for everything.

[Truman]

I'm not against advancement in medicine, planning or education.

Speaking historically - how much advancement was spurred via stretching of what is defined in the constitution?

This reminds me of the Literal Interpretation of the bible discussion that we have had...

Apples and Star Wars Defense Systems, PSU...

There is a process to define and amend the Constitution.

The Book of Wisdom?

Not so much. 'Sayin.

[Rack Fu]

I graduated from college in 1992 and hightailed it to Raleigh, North Carolina as fast as I could.

Why Raleigh? BTW, rack Gtown.

Economy, jobs, climate, grad schools, consistent top rankings on best places to live list, etc.

[War Wagon]

In other words, a bandwagon bitch.

[Screw_Michigan]

In other words, a bandwagon bitch.

Please, Whitey. I haven't sworn off Michigan, but I'm not going to sit around and wait for the state to figure itself out. You'd be a fool too. Beside, you know what they call reporters in West Michigan? Jizz-moppers. AKA unemployed.

Raleigh's a dump. Go big or go home, G-man.

[JMak]

Fuck Michigan! Those stupid-assed residents have fubar'd it. Whether it's the boogers electing the likes of Coleman and Kwame or the unions ransacking school districts and local government...it's all fucked up. The people are simply too stupid. Republican-run counties like Oakland and Kent are in decent shape, but you cannot escape the death spiral the Democrats, unions, and blacks have put the state into.

[Screw_Michigan]

Are you a Mich native, JTard?

[JMak]

S_M, yep.

KC Scott, Troy is the state's best burb.

[Rack Fu]

In other words, a bandwagon bitch.

Did you just try to smack me for moving to a place full of opportunity and growth as opposed to staying in Central New York? When I was 23? I guess I should have stayed and had a blossoming career as something like a forklift operator helping build the big fucking mall. Or I should have moved to such an awesome place as Kansas City. Kansas City - a city so full of growth and opportunity that it has a smaller population now than it did in 1970. A city with... what exactly? Raleigh only quadrupled in size during the same time period.

Jackson County, MO:
The median income for a household in the county was $39,277, and the median income for a family was $48,435. Males had a median income of $35,798 versus $27,403 for females. The per capita income for the county was $20,788. About 9.00% of families and 11.90% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16.40% of those under age 18 and 8.70% of those age 65 or over.

Onondaga County, NY:
The median income for a household in the county was $40,847, and the median income for a family was $51,876. Males had a median income of $39,048 versus $27,154 for females. The per capita income for the county was $21,336. About 8.60% of families and 12.20% of the population were below the poverty line, including 15.50% of those under age 18 and 7.10% of those age 65 or over.

Wake County, NC:
The median income for a household in the county was $54,988, and the median income for a family was $67,149. Males had a median income of $44,472 versus $31,579 for females. The per capita income for the county was $27,004. About 4.90% of families and 7.80% of the population were below the poverty line, including 8.60% of those under age 18 and 8.90% of those age 65 or over.

Raleigh's a dump. Go big or go home, G-man.

You might just be the only person in the US to share the sentiment that the Raleigh/Cary/Chapel Hill area is a dump. I left off Durham because that is a dump. :)

I'd still live there if I could.

[Paul]

A couple of the better High schools we used to compete in Football and Baseball with back in the 80's are now...

going to Staley.

Bide your time, Blue Springs fucko.

Blue Springs AND Lee's Summit schools are getting darker and darker every day. Hopefully there's some good athletes among them.

[Goober McTuber]

Blue Springs AND Lee's Summit schools are getting darker and darker every day.

Maybe they should pay their electric bills, you FAT fucking RETARD.

[Screw_Michigan]

S_M, yep.

KC Scott, Troy is the state's best burb.

Eh. Bloomfield Hills and Birmingham are better, but we're really just splitting hairs here.

[Paul]

Blue Springs AND Lee's Summit schools are getting darker and darker every day.

Maybe they should pay their electric bills, you FAT fucking RETARD.

BS and LS have the best schools in the state of Missouri, fucko....pretty safe to say they can pay their electric bills, and that my statement flew WAY over your mongoloid skull.

[Goober McTuber]

Blue Springs AND Lee's Summit schools are getting darker and darker every day.

Maybe they should pay their electric bills, you FAT fucking RETARD.

BS and LS have the best schools in the state of Missouri, fucko....pretty safe to say they can pay their electric bills, and that my statement flew WAY over your mongoloid skull.

No, I understood your statement completely, you FAT humorless fucking RETARD in a puffy coat.

[PSUFAN]

Where can I get a puffy bra?

--Fresno

[War Wagon]

BS and LS have the best schools in the state of Missouri

Not necessarily disagreeing, but on what do you base that statement?

Aside from Catholic schools, there are some darn good schools around St. Louis, Columbia, Jeff City, Joplin, etc. Hell, just in the KC area Ray-Pec may take exception to that.

[Diego in Seattle]

Republican-run counties like Oakland and Kent are in decent shape, but you cannot escape the death spiral the Democrats, unions, and blacks have put the state into.

So where does JMidol move to?

"Little Beirut."



Priceless.

[Carson]

Isn't DiS supposed to stay away from school threads?

[Diego in Seattle]

Isn't DiS supposed to stay away from school threads?

Aren't you supposed to stay away from any threads requiring intelligent thought?