THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Obama Quits Trinity To Win; Hillary Won’t Quit Trying To Win: Francis Cardinal George has removed Fr. Michael Pfleger from his pastoral duties at St. Sabina Roman Catholic Church for two weeks, reports CBS2Chicago.com . “I have asked Father Michael Pfleger, Pastor of St. Sabina's Parish, to step back from his obligations there,” the Cardinal said in a statement, “and take leave for a couple of weeks from his pastoral duties, effective today.” Pfleger has been pastor of the predominantly African-American St. Sabina parish on Chicago's South Side since 1981. The Cardinal acted after Pfleger delivered two race-baiting “sermons” on May 25th.
† What’s Next For Spitzer: Cecil Suwal, 23, pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder money and conspiring to promote prostitution in connection with the Emperors Club high priced ho ring that cost former Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) his job. “The plea bargain calls for Suwal, who has no criminal record, to get between 21 and 27 months in prison, although a judge could depart from that recommendation,” reports The Associated Press. Suwal's colleague Temeka Lewis pleaded guilty to similar charges in May. Spitzer (AKA “Client-9) has not been charged in the case – yet.
Mandatory busing involved about 12,000 of the district's 54,000 students. Three years after it started, the district reached its racial-enrollment goals. …
But mandatory busing didn't create as much diversity as the numbers might appear to show. White enrollment dropped by 28 percent in the first three years of busing, with many students moving to the suburbs or private schools, according to a district history of its desegregation efforts. (Minority enrollment over the same period went up about 10 percent.)
More minority than white students ended up riding buses, despite careful planning to avoid that. And too many schools, integrated on paper, were still segregated in the lunchroom, and sometimes even the classroom.
Busing did not achieve one of its main goals, which was to raise academic achievement, said Dorothy Woods, who spent decades as a teacher, principal and instructional coach in Seattle schools.
It did not improve relationships between teachers and students, she said, or rigor, or instruction. …
In its brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, the American Education Research Association said studies clearly show that diverse schools contribute to improved cross-racial understanding, a reduction in prejudice and a willingness to live and work in diverse settings.
It also said that diverse schools lead to higher academic achievement, but Seattle schools ended busing in part because it found no evidence of that.
“Busing "crippled us and diverted us from pursuing quality education," Seattle Public Schools' general counsel Gary Ikeda tells The Seattle Times. He adds that the Supreme Court decision requires the Seattle School Board to figure out how to foster diversity without mandating it.
† Sub-Par Solution For Sub-Prime Loans: Part II: The mortgage crisis has a high-profile poster child: Rep. Laura Richardson (D-CA), according to the Los Angeles Times. But like so many others in her predicament, she is hardly a victim:
[T]he foreclosure of the two-story Sacramento home she bought shortly after being elected to the Assembly in 2006 may have been the first time she lost a house, [but] it was not the first time Richardson had fallen behind on her payments. It continued a pattern started eight years ago.
Since then, the homes she still owns in San Pedro, where her mother lives, and Long Beach have fallen into default six times. The amount she owed ranged from $5,742 to almost $20,000, according to documents on file with Los Angeles County. …
The defaults have come at a quick pace lately, five in the last 13 months and the most recent March 28. The five defaults totaled nearly $71,000. During much of that time, Richardson was bankrolling her political career, lending her campaigns for Congress and Assembly a total of $177,500.
Although candidates sometimes use their home equity to help finance campaigns, experts couldn't remember anyone losing a house over it. ‘It's very surprising a member of Congress would allow it to happen,” said Bob Stern, president of the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. …
"She obviously extremely wanted to win this race, and this was the way she invested in it," said Stern.
Blogger David Dayen observed: “It seems like she's engaging in what amounts to a pyramid scheme - buying new homes with little money down, and at the same time lending her campaigns for state Assembly and Congress tens of thousands of dollars. So the money that would be used to pay off the loan is paying for her political upward mobility.”
† ICE Hopes To Have Chilling Effect On Illegal Immigration By Targeting Identity Thieves: In a recent editorial ridiculing the raid at the Agriprocessors Inc. meat processing plant in Postville, IA that resulted in trials and guilty pleas by 297 forged documented aliens who will be deported after serving jail time, The Wall Street Journal pointed out that the jobless rate in the state is 3.5 percent and fretted that the government’s E-verify program that checks whether Social Security numbers supplied to employers match the agency’s database will result in “every worker in the country run this new verification gauntlet to change jobs.”
Good news for The Journal: The jobs that are going begging in IA are not those that can be done by barely literate illegals, but those that require education and specialized skills. Reports The New York Times:
Last year, the state added nearly 13,000 nonfarm jobs, in part because of growth in ethanol and wind energy, and lost 3,300 people from the workforce. With statewide unemployment at 3.5 percent, compared to a national rate of 5 percent, nearly everyone who wants to work and can work has a job. …
Steven Smith, who runs a small technology company called GCommerce, was not deterred. After starting the company in the New York suburbs, he moved to downtown Des Moines in 2004, and expects to expand to 50 employees by the end of the year, from the mid-30s now. He said the costs of business were less than half what they were in New York, primarily because salaries and real estate prices are lower.
But he said it was difficult to hire people for advanced technical positions. “I plan a certain amount of my time during the week, 5 to 10 hours, recruiting. You’ve got to work at it. They’re not just going to come to you.”
Like many executives here, he has adopted programs to lure recent retirees back to work part time.
To retain staff, he provides stock options, flex time and short Fridays in the summer. And he has had to be flexible on salary. “People who have a real marketable skill, they know they can call their shots,” he said.
Instead of being concerned about whether their names and Social Security numbers match, you know what job-hoppers in IA are worried about? Brando Guerrero, 25, a sales analyst at Nationwide Insurance in Des Moines tells The Times that that he looks for companies that offer a free gym and dry cleaning, as well as have a Starbucks on site – and expects his employer to promote him on a regular basis so he doesn’t jump to another company.
Comments