Saturday, March 14, 2015


News Clips For The Day


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/9-teens-arrested-at-l-a-school-for-alleged-sexual-assault/

Teens arrested at L.A. school for alleged sexual assaults
By CRIMESIDER STAFF CBS NEWS
March 13, 2015

LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- Authorities say they've arrested ten male students from Venice High School for alleged sex assaults and unlawful sex acts against underage victims, CBS Los Angeles reported.

Four other students are being sought, Los Angeles Police Department Cmdr. Andy Smith announced at a news conference Friday. All of the suspects are between 14 and 17 years old

The LAPD said the investigation began Tuesday when officials at Venice High School alerted them about a victim of a possible sexual assault.

The alleged incidents took place both on and off campus, Smith said. Police believe some of the sex acts were forced and others were consensual.

Smith said the suspects were arrested on suspicion of sexual assault and unlawful sex with a minor.

He told reporters there was no evidence to suggest the suspects were involved in any gang activity. He was also asked if the students all belonged to the same club, group or sports team.

"We don't believe they're associated in that manner -- In fact, we're not sure all these 14 individuals know each other," Smith said. "But these are two [alleged] victims and 14 subjects and no single thing ties them all together."

"The Los Angeles Unified School District is cooperating fully with the ongoing investigation by LAPD and school police," LAUSD spokesman Thomas Waldman said in a statement. "This is a painful moment for Venice High School, and this district. I want you to know that no sexual misconduct of any kind by students or staff will ever be tolerated in L.A. Unified."

Waldman said the suspects' parents were notified and that crisis counselors were on campus Friday to assist students who might be affected.

Students told CBS Los Angeles reporter Jeff Nguyen the arrests happened after pictures of at least one of the accusers performing sex acts circulated around campus.

"Someone posted it on Instagram, and one of my friends sent it to my other friend," student Elizabeth Alvarez said. "The photo basically came to me, one of my friends sent it to me."

Another student told Nguyen she knows one of the alleged victims.

"She's embarrassed by what the whole school is talking about. So she made up an accusation against people that were football players who have futures that are messed up by her being embarrassed," said freshman Amari Pope.

Students Allen Hernandez and Josh Noonan said they saw two sets of boys being led away from the school Friday morning.

"I saw a look of nervousness and scared," said Hernandez.

"Next thing I see I saw him walking out in handcuffs. Two kids walking out in handcuffs. I saw the investigators and I was [thinking], 'Oh wow. That means something happened,'" said Noonan.

Some parents told Nguyen they found about the arrests from a recorded message from the principal.

"The message said that nine kids were arrested by LAPD for sexual misconduct," said parent Wilfredo Melgar.

Patricia Parker says she ran to campus to pull her son out of school after the news broke.

"Just to see his face and know everything is okay," Parker explained. "And knowing everybody is okay, I feel better."

Meanwhile, CBS Los Angeles reporter Randy Paige said the LAPD was giving out few details, saying the investigation is just beginning and juveniles are involved.

The suspects' families filed into the LAPD's Pacific Station Friday afternoon, asking reporters not to capture images of the juveniles. An attorney for one of the suspects declined CBS Los Angeles' request for comment.




“Authorities say they've arrested ten male students from Venice High School for alleged sex assaults and unlawful sex acts against underage victims, CBS Los Angeles reported. Four other students are being sought, Los Angeles Police Department Cmdr. Andy Smith announced at a news conference Friday. All of the suspects are between 14 and 17 years old.... He told reporters there was no evidence to suggest the suspects were involved in any gang activity. He was also asked if the students all belonged to the same club, group or sports team. "We don't believe they're associated in that manner -- In fact, we're not sure all these 14 individuals know each other," Smith said. "But these are two [alleged] victims and 14 subjects and no single thing ties them all together.".... The suspects' families filed into the LAPD's Pacific Station Friday afternoon, asking reporters not to capture images of the juveniles. An attorney for one of the suspects declined CBS Los Angeles' request for comment.”

Freshman Amari Pope stated that one of the victims, whom she knows personally, was “embarrassed” by the pictures having circulated around campus and “made up” a story against a group of football players. It looks as though at least one of the girls was voluntarily involved in sexual activity and somebody taped it. The story doesn't mention rape or assault, or what the other girl's story may be. It is even possible that Amari Pope is misinformed. Hopefully more information will come out about this, though, and perhaps schools could have mental health counseling for those teens who are sexually active and foolish enough to allow it to be taped. You always hear of boys who are “at risk kids,” but clearly many girls are too in one way or another.

When I was in the ninth grade my Physical Education teacher taught us some explicit things about sex and answered all our questions openly. We were an all girls class, of course. She didn't harangue or blame, but fully acknowledged that not all teens refrain from sex before they reach adulthood, and that the spread of disease and risk of pregnancy are major social and health problems in this country. Anybody who thinks ninth graders aren't “interested” yet is wrong. I think the schools need to take a role in that. Parents are sometimes either rather ignorant themselves, consider it to be a “private” religious matter only, or are too shy to take an early opportunity to talk to their kids of both sexes. Then one day they find that their child is going to be a parent or has come down with one of the several kinds of VD. While we are educating kids, we mustn't neglect this subject.





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pope-francis-after-2-years-a-revolution-at-the-vatican/

Pope Francis after 2 years: A revolution at the Vatican
By ANNA MATRANGA CBS NEWS
March 13, 2015

Photograph – Pope visits Asia, speaks English at meeting with Sri Lankan leaders

ROME -- Pope Francis marked his second anniversary as leader of the Catholic Church by meting out a little of what he talks about so much: forgiveness, mercy and compassion.

The pope heard confessions from the faithful in St. Peter's Basilica. He did the same thing last year, stunning the world by confessing in public, the first pope ever to do so.

On Thursday, he told a group of confessors that without a doubt, the sacrament of confession is the one that "best shows the merciful face of God" and confession should not be "a form of torture but rather a liberating encounter."

Francis has made mercy the bedrock of his ministry, putting a merciful, welcoming face on a church that had been plagued by sex scandals and allegations of financial corruption and mismanagement. Furthermore, when he assumed the papacy many Catholics felt alienated from a church they saw as out of touch and forbidding.

There's been an undeniable turnaround, what some have even called a revolution.

"The scandals have been reduced in number. Attention has been directed elsewhere," Cardinal Velasio de Paolis, former head of Holy See finances, told an Italian daily recently.

Indeed, that "elsewhere" is the pope himself, and the attention has been overwhelmingly positive. Francis has graced the covers of Rolling Stone, Esquire and Time Magazine, which dubbed him Person of the Year in 2013. It took the enormously popular John Paul II 16 years to win that accolade.

In fact, in just two years, Francis' popularity has come very close to that of Saint John Paul II.

A recent poll showed that 9 out of 10 American Catholics approve of him, as do 7 out of 10 Americans of all religions -- or none at all. Attendance at Vatican events has soared. In the Philippines in January, Francis presided over the biggest papal event in world history, drawing over 6 million pilgrims to a mass in Manila.

"He's changed my faith," lapsed Catholic Rossella Devivo said. "I had absolutely no intention of entering a church, but since he's been pope, I have grown more religious. This is absolutely incredible for me. He has brought me closer to the church."

Francis' simple lifestyle and humility have endeared him to the masses, as has his focus on the poor. Just three days into his papacy, he wished for "a poor Church, for the poor," and has repeatedly spoken out against economic injustice and a "culture of waste" which values profit over people.

"He has breathed life for the poor into the church," says Monsignor Anthony Figueiredo, a CBS News consultant and theologian on the staff of the Pontifical North American College at the Vatican. "This pope isn't known for building St. Peter's Basilica or the Sistine Chapel. He's known for building showers for the tramps, and visiting parishes in the most peripheral areas of the city, areas suffering from drugs and crime."

He's also known for his open-door policy, best encapsulated in his now famous, "who am I to judge" quote regarding homosexuals.

"I think he has a non-judgmental approach towards human beings, and that he puts more importance on forgiveness than the application of rules," says Joseph Duggan, a non-practicing Catholic who views Francis as a great leader.

Francis' free speech and spontaneous gestures have humanized him to many. The pope says he simply has to remain himself.

"If I were to try to act differently, I'd look ridiculous," he told a friend. But those same qualities have also caused confusion.

One Catholic wrote to a priest friend: "Though I know what he says has been taken out of context, now I have 13 nephews and nieces saying, 'the pope is now open to gay rights and marriage. The pope is saying we can thoughtfully use birth control. The pope says we only need to have 3 kids at most."

Some conservative Catholics say they're concerned that Francis may be eroding the Catholic identity.

"It is perhaps fair to say that while conservative Catholics are attracted to the personableness of Pope Francis, they are confused by many of the signals that he sends out in the areas of doctrine and morals: what are his intentions concerning marriage, divorce, remarriage, homosexuality, cohabitating couples?" asks one conservative priest who spoke to CBS News.

"When he says he wants the church to be more 'merciful,' is he signaling that traditional understandings of church teachings on these issues are to be thrown under the bus in the interest of packing churches with people who don't really believe what the Church teaches?"

But supporters say Francis is simply encouraging debate on issues that were considered off limits for years. The pope has said he is a "loyal son of the church," and has reaffirmed the church's ban on birth control, women priests and married clergy, while indicating an openness to re-evaluating the ban on divorced and remarried Catholics taking communion.

"This pope is actually on the same page as previous popes," says Monsignor Figueiredo. "Benedict worked in the curia, he approached doctrine from an orthodox view. John Paul II was a philosopher, so he approached it from a philosophic view. Francis is a pastor, so he's approaching it from a pastoral view. We may well see a change, but it will not be in the doctrine but in the way we approach people."

Opinion is also divided on how the pope has dealt with the issue of sex abuse.

In 2013, he established a commission of clergy and lay experts -- two of whom are abuse victims -- to improve procedures. In February of this year, he wrote to the world's bishops asking them to take "whatever steps necessary" to protect children, saying that "priority must not be given to any other type of concern, whatever its nature, such as the desire to avoid scandal."

Francis was the first pope to say the words that many had waited decades to hear: that bishops would be held accountable for covering up clerical sex abuse. Many believe the litmus test of the pope's commitment to accountability will be the fate of Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City, convicted by a grand jury in 2012 for failing to report a priest suspected of child sex abuse. Critics point out that, so far, Finn remains in his position.

Others wish the pope would move more swiftly on the issue of women in the church. While Francis has unambiguously declared that women cannot be ordained, he has spoken about enhancing their role in the church and putting them in leadership positions.

Yet, at this time, only two women actually hold high positions in the curia, the Vatican's administration, and the percentage of women employed in the Holy See stands at 18.

Francis has clearly shown that even in the Vatican, change can happen.

He has moved decisively to clean up Vatican finances, streamline Vatican bureaucracy and make the Vatican a more democratic place, decentralizing power in the church by involving bishops from around the world in consultative summits called "synods" to discuss issues of great importance.

"Before it was very difficult," one Congolese bishop told the National Catholic Reporter. "For me, this is a big, big change. We find now that what we are living is listened to here in the Vatican."

And the pope is changing the face of future Catholicism by appointing cardinals from far-flung places like Tonga and Cape Verde.

As one Vatican observer put it, it's not just that these guys will elect the next pope -- one of them could actually be the next pope. Revolutionary, indeed.




“On Thursday, he told a group of confessors that without a doubt, the sacrament of confession is the one that "best shows the merciful face of God" and confession should not be "a form of torture but rather a liberating encounter." Francis has made mercy the bedrock of his ministry, putting a merciful, welcoming face on a church that had been plagued by sex scandals and allegations of financial corruption and mismanagement. Furthermore, when he assumed the papacy many Catholics felt alienated from a church they saw as out of touch and forbidding.... Indeed, that "elsewhere" is the pope himself, and the attention has been overwhelmingly positive. Francis has graced the covers of Rolling Stone, Esquire and Time Magazine, which dubbed him Person of the Year in 2013. It took the enormously popular John Paul II 16 years to win that accolade. In fact, in just two years, Francis' popularity has come very close to that of Saint John Paul II. A recent poll showed that 9 out of 10 American Catholics approve of him, as do 7 out of 10 Americans of all religions -- or none at all. … Francis' simple lifestyle and humility have endeared him to the masses, as has his focus on the poor. Just three days into his papacy, he wished for "a poor Church, for the poor," and has repeatedly spoken out against economic injustice and a "culture of waste" which values profit over people. "He has breathed life for the poor into the church," says Monsignor Anthony Figueiredo, a CBS News consultant and theologian on the staff of the Pontifical North American College at the Vatican. "This pope isn't known for building St. Peter's Basilica or the Sistine Chapel. He's known for building showers for the tramps, and visiting parishes in the most peripheral areas of the city, areas suffering from drugs and crime."

“Some conservative Catholics say they're concerned that Francis may be eroding the Catholic identity.” The Catholic “identity” shouldn't be the center of parishioners' faith. Love, forgiveness and fairness should be. Group identity is the very thing that makes religions into cults, and the subject of warfare. Two kinds of fundamentalist Islamic groups are fighting over all of their territories, now including where they have settled in Europe, Africa, Asia and the US. If they would focus on those three things, they would be setting up enclaves of peace and good community relations around the world instead of violent conflict.

Pope Francis is changing the Church from an economic, political and power based structure, into a place where people pay attention to the words of Jesus more than dogma and ritual. That's what I wish more Protestant Fundamentalist churches would do. Instead they are, in too many cases, trying to change the US government into a Dominionist organization with much fewer freedoms and “Biblical Law.” I do hope our US Catholics will stand up against that growing materialism in the Christian community and vote the right wing forces out of office. If that doesn't happen, I really am concerned about our future.





RACISM ON CAMPUS 2015 – TWO ARTICLES


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/are-college-campuses-becoming-more-racist/

Are college campuses becoming more racist?
By ELAINE QUIJANO CBS NEWS
March 13, 2015

Photograph – NYU student Devan Worth
 CBS NEWS

NEW YORK -- The disturbing racist videos at the University of Oklahoma may be shocking, but for many, not surprising. According to the Department of Education, the number of racial complaints reported on college campuses has increased from 555 in 2009 to 939 last year.

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education has chronicled campus racial incidents on its website for the last two decades, averaging about 50 incidents a year. To fight intolerance on campuses, black students across the country launched an Internet campaign called "I too am."

New York University sophomore Devan Worth helped organize their campus campaign. She told me she felt really alienated when she first arrived at school.

"A lot of my interactions were with white students who didn't understand my experience," said Worth. "I had to teach everyone how to treat me like a person, honestly."

University of Maryland professor Julie Park says her study on campus racial climates shows 48 percent of white students say they had at least one close friend of another race, compared to 74 of blacks, 92 percent of Latinos and 84 percent of Asians.




“The disturbing racist videos at the University of Oklahoma may be shocking, but for many, not surprising. According to the Department of Education, the number of racial complaints reported on college campuses has increased from 555 in 2009 to 939 last year. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education has chronicled campus racial incidents on its website for the last two decades, averaging about 50 incidents a year. To fight intolerance on campuses, black students across the country launched an Internet campaign called "I too am."... "A lot of my interactions were with white students who didn't understand my experience," said Worth. "I had to teach everyone how to treat me like a person, honestly."

There is a general lack of personal experience among white Protestants and their fellows of other racial and religious groups. Racists tend to take other people's opinions of blacks rather than holding a long conversation with them, and “toe the party line” – perhaps for fear of their lives and jobs. The South, like the West, has never been a really safe place to live. That's one real reason why so many ordinary Joes from those areas feel that they really NEED to own guns. I don't understand why blacks in the more uneducated Southern regions continue to live there at all. Just last year there were two news articles about KKK flyers which had been anonymously left on neighborhood lawns. I suppose they do it because “it's home,” and they know their enemy well. Better the devil you know than those you don't.

I think the Catholics do better in that way, very often. The Catholic Church doesn't teach the inferiority of the black race, as many Protestant congregations do. See the following article on the subject. It is extremely insightful and interesting on a subject that I have never read about before. I clipped only a few paragraphs from what is a long article. Go to the suggested website for the rest of the article.


http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1086

Catholicism and the Civil Rights Movement
Andrew S. Moore, Saint Anselm College
Published:  March 8, 2007   |   Last updated:  June 28, 2013 -

See more at: http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1086#sthash.aNteEAgB.dpuf

“In Alabama the Catholic Church's involvement with the civil rights movement was decidedly mixed. Most of Alabama's white Catholics shared white southerners' racism and initially opposed the goals of the movement. They preferred order and stability instead of activism for integration and racial justice. Catholic teaching clearly opposed racial discrimination, however, and after the mid-1960s there was little official sympathy for segregation. For most of the civil rights movement, the Catholic Church in Alabama remained on the margins of the debates over integration and focused on internal Church affairs. It took the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights to draw the Church from the margins into the mainstream of the movement.

After the Civil War, the Alabama Catholic Church abided by the demands of state-sanctioned segregation, even as it sought to meet the spiritual needs of the state's African American Catholics. As a result, the Church built separate parishes, schools, and hospitals and invited members of religious orders (most notably the Society of Saint Edmund and the Society of Saint Joseph) to work exclusively with African Americans. This practice reinforced segregation, but it also provided spiritual care and nurtured a separate community identity among African Americans. The resulting black Catholic subculture would become one foundation for later civil rights activism, especially in Mobile and Selma. 

Not Entirely Segregated

State laws and local ordinances may have demanded separate facilities, but Catholic Church–related activities were not strictly segregated. Blacks and whites occasionally participated in religious functions together. They attended the same parish at times, even if African Americans often sat apart from whites and received communion after white parishioners. Similarly, the diocesan-wide Christ the King celebration (an annual parade and open-air mass held in Mobile's Bienville Square and smaller venues in Birmingham and Montgomery) included representatives of black parishes and lay organizations. Diocesan-wide organizations were open to both white and black laypeople as well.

Father Albert FoleyDespite these internal arrangements, Archbishop Thomas J. Toolen forbade priests to challenge publicly the state's segregation laws or participate in demonstrations. They were instructed to work within the law and not force confrontations that would agitate the state's white population. This curtailed the activism of a few priests and invited conflict between Toolen and those Catholics who feared that the Church was in danger of losing its moral authority on race. For example, in the early 1960s, Father Albert Foley, Jesuit professor of sociology at Spring Hill College, worked with Mobile Mayor Joseph Langan (himself a Catholic) to broker an agreement that would desegregate Mobile's downtown businesses. Langan eased Toolen's mind about Foley's involvement, but on more than one other occasion Toolen tried to have Foley re-assigned out of the diocese. And in Selma, African American Catholics took encouragement from the white priests of the Edmundite order, who treated them with fairness and dignity and assured them of their spiritual worth. These priests, by their refusal to condemn civil rights activism, encouraged African Americans to press for change. The activities of these few Catholics signaled the direction that the Church would take as the civil rights movement intensified. Indeed, in 1958 the American Catholic bishops issued a statement condemning segregation and calling for racial justice. They declared segregation a moral wrong that was not to be tolerated. The bishops' statement declared that "the heart of the race question is moral and religious" and that "segregation cannot be reconciled with the Christian view of our fellow man." 

Seeking Gradual Change

Sixteenth Street Church Bombing -- Privately, Archbishop Toolen concurred in that opinion, but he still insisted that change take place gradually. He denounced the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, in which four young African American girls were killed. That same year, he permitted auxiliary bishop Joseph Durick to join with 10 other Birmingham-area Protestant and Jewish clergymen in a statement that acknowledged some hostility toward court-ordered school desegregation but counseled that their followers should avoid conflict and go along with the decision. Both moderate and liberal clergymen urged respect for law and order and reminded Alabamians that every human being is "created in the image of God and is entitled to respect as a fellow human being with all basic rights, privileges and responsibilities which belong to humanity." Later that year Durick signed a similar appeal to the city's African American inhabitants, urging them to forego demonstrations in favor of a "peaceful Birmingham." As a response to that second statement, Martin Luther King Jr. composed his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail."

- See more at: http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1086#sthash.aNteEAgB.dpuf





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/university-of-oklahoma-fraternity-chapter-hires-stephen-jones-high-profile-attorney/

OU frat chapter hires attorney who represented Timothy McVeigh
CBS/AP
March 13, 2015

Photograph – Attorney Stephen Jones talks with the media outside the Federal Courthouse in Oklahoma City, Monday, Aug. 4, 2014.  AP PHOTO/SUE OGROCKI

OKLAHOMA CITY - The actions of some fraternity members at the University of Oklahoma caught engaging in a racist chant are inexcusable, but student members still have rights that must be protected, an attorney hired to represent the local chapter said Friday.

Stephen Jones, who gained national prominence as the attorney for convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, said members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and their parents also are concerned about the students' safety after some received death threats and were physically and verbally assaulted.

Jones said he has not been retained to initiate any litigation, but to ensure that the due process rights of members are protected from actions by the university and national chapter. He said there are some legal questions about the fraternity house that OU President David Boren ordered closed after the release of the video, which showed some members engaging in a racist chant that referenced lynching and said African-Americans would never be allowed to become members.

He said the bus on which the students were caught making the chant was one of five charter buses that were taking members to a Founder's Day party at a country club in Oklahoma City on Saturday.

"We're talking about one incident with nine seconds of video, on one of five buses," Jones said.

Jones ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for U.S. Senate in 1990 against Boren, who stepped down from his U.S. Senate seat in 1994 to become president of OU.

A spokesman for the fraternity's national headquarters said Friday that officials with the Oklahoma chapter have stopped communicating with them.

"We have not heard from the Oklahoma chapter," spokesman Brandon Weghorst said. "They have not engaged us since the time the chapter was closed."

Weghorst said the national fraternity is moving forward with plans to expel all of the suspended members of the OU chapter, a move that will permanently revoke their membership.

Meanwhile, Weghorst said the national fraternity is continuing its investigation into SAE chapters at other universities, but did not provide any updates on those investigations Friday. He confirmed Thursday that investigations were underway into chapters at the University of Texas-Austin and Louisiana Tech University in Ruston.

The national SAE fraternity has said some allegations of racism, which it acknowledges, refer to incidents from more than 20 years ago. But the fraternity maintains that none of its official chants are racist and that members of the Oklahoma chapter likely learned the one that was recorded from fellow chapter members.

In Boulder, Colorado, the SAE chapter hung a banner this week outside their fraternity house that reads: "Not on our campus. Not in our chapter. Colorado Chi brothers stand against racism or hate of any kind."

The University of Washington in Seattle is investigating allegations that members of the SAE chapter there made racial slurs and obscene gestures to black students during a demonstration last month. The UW fraternity chapter's president, Michael Hickey, told the Seattle Times he believes the slurs came from nonmembers.

The University of Oklahoma, located in the southern Oklahoma City suburb of Norman, has about 27,000 students, about 5 percent of whom are black.

A top high school football recruit de-committed from the football-crazy universityafter seeing the video.

Another video surfaced earlier this week showing Beauton Gilbow, the fraternity's 78-year-old "house mother" known as "Mom B," using that same racial slur in 2013.




“The actions of some fraternity members at the University of Oklahoma caught engaging in a racist chant are inexcusable, but student members still have rights that must be protected, an attorney hired to represent the local chapter said Friday. Stephen Jones, who gained national prominence as the attorney for convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, said members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and their parents also are concerned about the students' safety after some received death threats and were physically and verbally assaulted.... "We're talking about one incident with nine seconds of video, on one of five buses," Jones said. Jones ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for U.S. Senate in 1990 against Boren, who stepped down from his U.S. Senate seat in 1994 to become president of OU. A spokesman for the fraternity's national headquarters said Friday that officials with the Oklahoma chapter have stopped communicating with them.....Weghorst said the national fraternity is moving forward with plans to expel all of the suspended members of the OU chapter, a move that will permanently revoke their membership.”.... Meanwhile, Weghorst said the national fraternity is continuing its investigation into SAE chapters at other universities, but did not provide any updates on those investigations Friday. He confirmed Thursday that investigations were underway into chapters at the University of Texas-Austin and Louisiana Tech University in Ruston.... The University of Washington in Seattle is investigating allegations that members of the SAE chapter there made racial slurs and obscene gestures to black students during a demonstration last month. The UW fraternity chapter's president, Michael Hickey, told the Seattle Times he believes the slurs came from nonmembers.”

“In Boulder, Colorado, the SAE chapter hung a banner this week outside their fraternity house that reads: "Not on our campus. Not in our chapter. Colorado Chi brothers stand against racism or hate of any kind." Actually as this saga unfolds across the country I am relieved by many of the things I have seen. The Boulder chapter has voluntarily posted a banner declaring that their group is and will continue to be free of the racist taint. I am also pleased by the firm measures that the National organization have taken, and quickly, in terminating the memberships of all the Oklahoma members. It is unfortunate that threats and attacks leveled at the guilty students is occurring, of course. The following website on the threats is informative. http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2015/03/jesuit-dallas-president-says-graduate-appears-to-be-leading-racist-chant-in-ou-sae-video.html/. Rice states in that article, “'I know everyone wants to know why or how this happened. I admit it likely was fueled by alcohol consumed at the house before the bus trip, but that’s not an excuse. Yes, the song was taught to us, but that too doesn’t work as an explanation. It’s more important to acknowledge what I did and what I didn’t do. I didn’t say no, and I clearly dismissed an important value I learned at my beloved high school, Dallas Jesuit. We were taught to be ‘Men for Others.’ I failed in that regard, and in those moments, I also completely ignored the core values and ethics I learned from my parents and others.

“At this point, all I can do is be thoughtful and prayerful about my next steps, but I am also concerned about the fraternity friends still on campus. Apparently, they are feeling unsafe and some have been harassed by others. Hopefully, the university will protect them.'”.... “This sign now sits in front of the Rice house in Northwest Dallas. It says, “Racism Is Taught.” I am proud of Parker Rice. He is clearly an intelligent young man, even if he did engage in behavior which was obscene in “going along with the crowd.” As he said in an article yesterday, “I didn't say no.” If everybody would follow that simple rule there would be no more lynchings or other peer group abuses in our country.





TWO SIDES OF POVERTY



http://www.npr.org/2014/05/18/313137739/the-merits-of-income-inequality-whats-the-right-amount

The Merits Of Income Inequality: What's The Right Amount?
John Ydstie
MAY 18, 2014

Photograph – The Occupy Wall Street movement helped put the issue of income inequality in the spotlight. But economists say there's a balance.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Income inequality is a big problem, many economists agree. But they also say some level of inequality is necessary for capitalism to work.

Inequality in the U.S. has risen to levels not seen since the 1920s. The top 1 percent pocket more than 20 percent of the nation's income, and the 400 richest people in the country own more wealth than everyone in the bottom 50 percent.

That's not healthy for the society or the economy, says Branko Milanovic, an economist at the City University of New York Graduate Center. For one thing, he says, it undermines the idea of equal opportunity.

"It makes some people excluded or poor and unable to actually, for example, go to school, complete studies and contribute to society," he says.

That hurts individuals and, Milanovic says, it hurts the broader economy by not allowing a whole segment of society to be as productive as it could be.

French economist Thomas Piketty has warned in his best-seller Capital in the Twenty-First Century that inequality is likely to grow. That's because capitalism tends to reward the owners of capital with a greater and greater share of the economy's output, he says. Meanwhile, wage-earners get a smaller and smaller share.

Milanovic says that concentration of wealth is a threat to democracy. "The elites start dominating the political discourse and even political decision-making, and then they reinforce their own privilege," he says.

Still, Milanovic says some level of inequality is needed to make capitalism work.

"It provides incentives for harder work, study, investment and ... general desire to better one's condition and the condition of one's kids," he says.

But what's the right level of inequality? Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, says whether a certain level of inequality is good or bad depends on how it came be.

"If your society has a lot of inequality because a lot of your producers have done very well selling their products on global markets, that kind of inequality is not harmful in general," he says. "But if you have inequality because your poorer people don't have enough economic opportunity, I would say that is a big problem."

Cowen thinks the big rise in incomes at the top in the U.S. is coming mostly for the right reasons. But he is concerned that incomes are stagnating for Americans in the middle and at the bottom. He believes that's partly the result of inadequate education and the high cost of health care and housing.

There was a period of declining inequality in the U.S.: in the three decades after World War II. But, as Cowen points out, that happened because so much wealth and capital, like factories, were destroyed in the previous three decades by two world wars and the Great Depression.

"The relative equality following World War II was because we had destroyed so many things in the world and we needed to rebuild them, and that created a lot of middle-class jobs for people," he says. "But short of having another world war, we cannot re-create those circumstances, and of course we shouldn't try to."

But there were other reasons for a more equal distribution of income and wealth back then: higher taxes on the wealthy, for one. And, Harvard labor economist Richard Freeman says, there was another difference between then and now.

"One of the key factors in that period of time was very strong unions," he says. Those unions bargained with the owners of capital to give workers a larger share of the economy's output.

But Freeman says we shouldn't look to unions, which are much weaker now, to have a big impact. In fact, he takes a very different tack.

"The capitalists are making money; everybody's got to be a bit of a capitalist," he says.

That's an idea as old as America's beginnings, says Freeman. The founders, he says, thought broad ownership of land, a capital asset, was very important.

"That was being driven by the notion that if we don't make sure that everybody has an ownership stake in what was the capital of that time, we were going to end up with a class of rich people separate from the middle class, and that was not healthy for democracy," Freeman says.

He advocates employee stock ownership and profit-sharing as tactics for closing America's inequality gap. Milanovic suggests substantial estate taxes and more equal taxation of labor and capital — currently income from labor is taxed at significantly higher levels. Cowen would focus on improving education and on making health care and housing more affordable to help people at the bottom do better.




“Income inequality is a big problem, many economists agree. But they also say some level of inequality is necessary for capitalism to work. Inequality in the U.S. has risen to levels not seen since the 1920s. The top 1 percent pocket more than 20 percent of the nation's income, and the 400 richest people in the country own more wealth than everyone in the bottom 50 percent. That's not healthy for the society or the economy, says Branko Milanovic, an economist at the City University of New York Graduate Center. For one thing, he says, it undermines the idea of equal opportunity.... That hurts individuals and, Milanovic says, it hurts the broader economy by not allowing a whole segment of society to be as productive as it could be. French economist Thomas Piketty has warned in his best-seller Capital in the Twenty-First Century that inequality is likely to grow. That's because capitalism tends to reward the owners of capital with a greater and greater share of the economy's output, he says. Meanwhile, wage-earners get a smaller and smaller share.... Milanovic says that concentration of wealth is a threat to democracy. "The elites start dominating the political discourse and even political decision-making, and then they reinforce their own privilege," he says.... "But if you have inequality because your poorer people don't have enough economic opportunity, I would say that is a big problem." Cowen thinks the big rise in incomes at the top in the U.S. is coming mostly for the right reasons. But he is concerned that incomes are stagnating for Americans in the middle and at the bottom. He believes that's partly the result of inadequate education and the high cost of health care and housing.... "The relative equality following World War II was because we had destroyed so many things in the world and we needed to rebuild them, and that created a lot of middle-class jobs for people," he says. "But short of having another world war, we cannot re-create those circumstances, and of course we shouldn't try to." But there were other reasons for a more equal distribution of income and wealth back then: higher taxes on the wealthy, for one. And, Harvard labor economist Richard Freeman says, there was another difference between then and now. "One of the key factors in that period of time was very strong unions," he says. Those unions bargained with the owners of capital to give workers a larger share of the economy's output.... "The capitalists are making money; everybody's got to be a bit of a capitalist," he says. That's an idea as old as America's beginnings, says Freeman. The founders, he says, thought broad ownership of land, a capital asset, was very important. "That was being driven by the notion that if we don't make sure that everybody has an ownership stake in what was the capital of that time, we were going to end up with a class of rich people separate from the middle class, and that was not healthy for democracy," Freeman says.

Milanovic is in general advocating a return to the conditions of the 1950s and 60s, and from my own memories of the time period, it was an easier life. It was a time of steady employment and higher wages for labor, with the much maligned unions. I remember once my father crossed a picket line at Thomasville Furniture Industries and one of the strikers hit the windshield of his car and broke it out. Some ordinary workers were against unions because they sometimes shut down a plant and caused workers to have no wages for a time. And, of course businesses hated them for the force they were able to apply in those days. As the article says, unions don't have that much bargaining power any more, and many businesses still will fire workers who try to set up a union shop. There are also those who for philosophical reasons hate unions – they have been connected with communism both in the US and around the world.

The fact is, however, before the unions there were no controls over the hours and conditions that factory workers had to endure and their pay was pitifully low. It was little better than slave wages sometimes. See this history of unions on Wikipedia: “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States.” One problem now with unions is that they used to be based on industrial type operations with many employees doing menial work. The union movement gained power simply by closing down the factories by walking off the job in huge numbers. I remember seeing a few picket lines when I was young.

I am encouraged about the future of unions, however, by the large-scale operations in the last couple of years against most if not all of the fast food businesses. McDonald's CEO, within the last two or three months did say that he will “support” a higher federal minimum wage – though he stopped short of raising his workers without a federal requirement to do so. Walmart, on the other hand, has actually raised their workers' base pay significantly without the Feds making that move. I think the power of unions is not dead yet. I also signed petitions on the Internet to force Walmart to “do the right thing.” Facebook pages publicly shamed Walmart for months before they upped their pay, also. Both Facebook and Twitter are forces to be feared nowadays. It's no wonder Big Business was so opposed to the Net Neutrality issue recently. It would be so much better to shut down websites if they say the wrong thing. Right?





http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/03/12/391872813/when-life-overwhelms-this-group-lends-a-healthy-hand

When Life Overwhelms, This Group Lends A Healthy Hand
Anders Kelto
MARCH 12, 2015

Photograph – Ella Barnes-Williams visits the thrift shop associated with Martha's Table, a nonprofit social services organization in Washington, D.C.
Anders Kelto/NPR

Ella Barnes-Williams is dealing with a lot right now.

For starters, her government-subsidized house in Northeast Washington, D.C., leaks when it rains. She points at a big brown splotch on the ceiling.

"It's like mold, mold, mold all over," she says. "I've got to clean that now 'cause that just came back."

Barnes-Williams is 54 and lives with her 30-year-old daughter and three young grandchildren. All three grandkids have severe asthma, which makes the mold a serious problem. And she and her daughter are diabetic.

On top of the housing and health problems, Barnes-Williams hasn't had steady work for more than a decade. At the end of most months, the family runs out of food.

As if all that weren't enough, their house was recently robbed — twice. "They, like, went shopping in my house," Barnes-Williams says. "They even stole the kids' school uniforms."

But she isn't the type of person to give up. Though she dropped out of high school as a teenager, she went back to school and got her diploma at age 46. She now attends community college; attends career training workshops; and volunteers on political campaigns.

There's also a steady stream of visitors to her house because she's a notary public. She receives $2 per stamped document, which she says helps with small costs around the house.

But, despite being hardworking and well-connected in her community, Barnes-Williams didn't know about a wide range of social programs that are available to help her family — until she met a young man named Phung Tran.

Tran grew up in Washington, D.C., and is a senior at the University of Maryland. Two days a week, he comes to a small office in the Children's National Medical Center to make phone calls through a program called Health Leads.

"I connect low-income families at the hospital with different resources in the area," Tran says.

He first started working with Barnes-Williams a few months ago. She had about ten specific needs, he discovered — many related to food, clothing and housing. "It was kind of overwhelming at first," he says.

So they made a list and started working through the items, one by one. Her top priority was food; Tran referred her to a local food pantry that now provides the family with free groceries once a month.

Next was furniture: Tran found an organization that gave Barnes-Williams a couch, shelves, lamps, a drawing board, and puzzles for the grandkids.

Now he's helping address the mold problem, by connecting Barnes-Williams with an organization called Breathe DC, which provides air purifiers, vacuum cleaners and specific advice on how to stop mold.

Tran is also lining up summer activities for Barnes-Williams' grandkids, including a camp geared toward kids with asthma.

Health Leads operates in seven cities across the U.S. and has more than a thousand volunteer advocates, the vast majority of whom are college students. It was founded by Rebecca Onie. Now the organization's CEO (and recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2009) Onie came up with the idea as a college sophomore in the 1990s. While volunteering at a hospital in Boston, she often asked doctors this question: If you had unlimited resources, what's the one thing you would give your patients?

The answer that came back over and over again, she says, was food, transportation, or a better place to live, because those were the real problems — and the underlying cause of many patients' health problems.

This led Onie to imagine an entirely different kind of health care system — "one in which a physician or nurse could prescribe basic resources that a patient needs to be healthy, like heat in the winter or access to healthy food," she says.

And that's exactly what Health Leads does it. It trains doctors to ask patients about their social needs, and then connects patients with organizations that can meet those needs.

Onie says the long-term goal is to show that providing patients with better food, housing, transportation, and so on not only improves patients' health, but also reduces the cost of health care. She and her team are collecting data to try to make that case.

"Then we can work closely with health care systems across the country," she says, "to really make [addressing social needs] an integral part of how they deliver care."

Since Ella Barnes-Williams began working with Health Leads a few months ago, she's been making regular trips toMartha's Table, a food pantry in Washington, D.C. She had no idea how much help was out there, she says. She just needed someone to help her find it.

This story is part of the NPR series, What Shapes Health?The series explores social and environmental factors that affect health throughout life. It is inspired, in part, by findings in a recent poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.




“Barnes-Williams is 54 and lives with her 30-year-old daughter and three young grandchildren. All three grandkids have severe asthma, which makes the mold a serious problem. And she and her daughter are diabetic. On top of the housing and health problems, Barnes-Williams hasn't had steady work for more than a decade. At the end of most months, the family runs out of food. As if all that weren't enough, their house was recently robbed — twice. "They, like, went shopping in my house," Barnes-Williams says. "They even stole the kids' school uniforms.".... Though she dropped out of high school as a teenager, she went back to school and got her diploma at age 46. She now attends community college; attends career training workshops; and volunteers on political campaigns. There's also a steady stream of visitors to her house because she's a notary public. She receives $2 per stamped document, which she says helps with small costs around the house. But, despite being hardworking and well-connected in her community, Barnes-Williams didn't know about a wide range of social programs that are available to help her family — until she met a young man named Phung Tran.”

This operation reminds me of the way Goodwill Industries works with jobless people. I went to them once to get job leads. The lady had me fill out a form so long that it took me at least half an hour to fill it in, covering more needs than I was aware I had. They don't focus on providing income alone, like Social Services offices in Jacksonville, but on serving the whole person. Not only does it fill a niche that is needed with the poor. Good Will Industries will not only link you up with employers, but give you a second hand but good business suit to wear to the interview. It also fills a human need with a warm person-to-person contact that is really encouraging.





https://healthleadsusa.org/

A DIFFERENT KIND OF HEALTHCARE

“Health Leads transforms the way health systems deliver care by enabling providers to “prescribe” basic resources like food and heat just as they do medication.  Patients can take these prescriptions to Health Leads in the clinic where we’ll work with them to connect to community resources and public benefits using a sophisticated, custom-built client and resource database.

We recruit and train college students— Health Leads Advocates – to fill these prescriptions by working side by side with patients to connect them with the basic resources they need to be healthy. …. Health Leads Advocates then work side by side with patients to navigate the complexity of the resource landscape – including tracking down phone numbers, printing maps, securing transportation, and completing applications. The Advocates follow up with patients regularly by phone, email, or during clinic visits. Relationships may be long-term or short-term based on patients’ needs and preferences.”





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cats-v-birds-who-has-to-die/

Cats vs. birds: Who has to die?
By PAULA REID CBS NEWS
March 13, 2015

A controversial bill that would allow people to trap, sterilize feral cats, then release them where they were trapped is wending its way through the Virginia state senate, and it's had the unintended consequence of dividing the animal lover community between the save-the-cats and save-the-birds crowd.

Kayla Christiano, of cat advocacy group Alley Cat Allies, argued the case for the trap-neuter-return (TNR) protocol, accompanied by a stray cat dubbed "Patches," who's about to head home to his suburban Maryland neighborhood. "He was brought to the clinic where he was neutered, he received his vaccination for rabies, and the top of this left ear was clipped so we know that that cat has been sterilized and vaccinated," she said in an interview with CBS News.

Under the program, the cats released also have caregivers, who feed them and check in on their health. Those on the side of the feral cat say that TNR is the most effective approach to stabilizing and reducing cat populations, while at the same time saving them from kill shelters, which take in the cats, then euthanize them.

But as far as bird advocates are concerned, what's good for the cats is bad for the birds. All of those cats are killing birds by the billions each year - an estimated 1.4 to 3.7 billion in the U.S., according to the journal Nature Communications. And a University of Nebraska study published in 2010 says feral cats are responsible for killing off 33 species of birds worldwide.

Grant Sizemore, the director of the Invasive Species Program at the American Bird Conservancy, says that the cats need to be better controlled. "They contribute to widespread ecological degradation, including the predation of wildlife, and a number of health concerns," he told CBS News.

Cat-lovers counter that neutering and returning cats is an effective way to reduce and stabilize their population. Sizemore, on the other hand, favors "removing these cats from our local neighborhoods and parks and then returning them to the shelter where they have the chance of finding a forever home."

And Sizemore himself has adopted a feral kitten. But many stray cats are not suitable for adoption, so, "really, the only alternative to TNR is to bring them to the shelter where they are killed," Christiano said.

Sizemore says that's to be expected. "Some of the cats will need to be euthanized if they cannot find a home. Unfortunately we have a major pet over-population."

Further, cat advocates, he says, are wrong when they claim that TNR reduces cat populations. "On the contrary, sometimes it leads to increases in the number of cats in the environment, because people see these feral cat colonies as a convenient place to abandon or dump their pets."

PETA sides with the bird lovers, although its reasoning has more to do with its evaluation of the TNR program. Although it reluctantly supports TNR under very specific circumstances, PETA's statement notes "countless reports" in which cats "suffer and die horrible deaths because they must fend for themselves outdoors," and it asserts, "Having witnessed firsthand the gruesome things that can happen to feral cats, we cannot in good conscience advocate trapping and releasing as a humane way to deal with overpopulation."




“Kayla Christiano, of cat advocacy group Alley Cat Allies, argued the case for the trap-neuter-return (TNR) protocol, accompanied by a stray cat dubbed "Patches," who's about to head home to his suburban Maryland neighborhood. "He was brought to the clinic where he was neutered, he received his vaccination for rabies, and the top of this left ear was clipped so we know that that cat has been sterilized and vaccinated," she said in an interview with CBS News. Under the program, the cats released also have caregivers, who feed them and check in on their health. Those on the side of the feral cat say that TNR is the most effective approach to stabilizing and reducing cat populations, while at the same time saving them from kill shelters, which take in the cats, then euthanize them.... All of those cats are killing birds by the billions each year - an estimated 1.4 to 3.7 billion in the U.S., according to the journal Nature Communications. And a University of Nebraska study published in 2010 says feral cats are responsible for killing off 33 species of birds worldwide.... And Sizemore himself has adopted a feral kitten. But many stray cats are not suitable for adoption, so, "really, the only alternative to TNR is to bring them to the shelter where they are killed," Christiano said.”

“Although it reluctantly supports TNR under very specific circumstances, PETA's statement notes "countless reports" in which cats "suffer and die horrible deaths because they must fend for themselves outdoors...” I tend to agree with Christiano that not only do feral cats kill too many birds, they may die of starvation, dog attacks, and are fairly often too fearful of humans to make them acceptable pets. And then there is the ever present threat of rabies. Jacksonville has two or three rabies reports a year on a regular basis. I think all people who “love” cats should do them the favor of sterilizing them immediately and give them their shots. A microchip would be good, too, so that when your cat gets a case of wanderlust and disappears for a week or so, whoever finds him can get his microchip read at the vet's. There's simply no short supply of cats to adopt at local shelters, so there's no excuse for letting your six month kitten become pregnant, which they can do at that young age. I'm a cat lover, but I'm also sensible.





http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/groom-fails-math-test-indian-bride-walks-out-of-wedding/2015/03/13/50d8c69e-c94e-11e4-bea5-b893e7ac3fb3_story.html

Indian bride walks out of wedding when groom fails math test
By Associated Press 
March 13, 2015

NEW DELHI — An Indian bride walked out of her wedding ceremony after the groom failed to solve a simple math problem, police said Friday.

The bride tested the groom on his math skills and when he got the sum wrong, she walked out.

The question she asked: How much is 15 plus six?

His reply: 17.

The incident took place late Wednesday in Rasoolabad village near the industrial town of Kanpur in northern Uttar Pradesh state, local police officer Rakesh Kumar said Friday.

The groom’s family tried persuading the bride to return, but she refused. She said the groom had misled them about his education.

“The groom’s family kept us in the dark about his poor education,” said Mohar Singh, the bride’s father. “Even a first grader can answer this.”

Local police mediated between the families and both sides returned all the gifts and jewelry that had been exchanged before the wedding, Kumar said.

Last month, another bride in Uttar Pradesh married a wedding guest after the original groom had a seizure and collapsed at the wedding venue.

The groom’s family had not revealed that the groom was epileptic. While the groom was rushed to a hospital in Rampur town, the bride asked one of the wedding guests to step in and married him.

Most marriages in India are arranged by the families of the bride and groom. Except for brief meetings, the couple rarely gets to know each other before the nuptials.




“Most marriages in India are arranged by the families of the bride and groom. Except for brief meetings, the couple rarely gets to know each other before the nuptials.” This fascinating story took me up short. The bride was not, certainly, “in love with her husband to be after all because in India that isn't encouraged or even allowed. Even so, it sounds to me like cruel behavior on the part of the bride, but I think she was probably simply wisely protecting the genetics of her future offspring and making an honest judgment on who she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. The question she asked, after all, was very simple – “How much do 15 and 6 make, and he answered 17. What? Her family stood behind her, I am glad to see, and both parties returned the wedding gifts. It's sad in a way, but definitely for the best.