St. Louis CofCC Blog

KSDK-NBC-5:

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The U.S. Department of Justice is suing St. Louis County for racial discrimination.

The Justice Department filed the suit Tuesday, alleging that the suburban Robertson Fire Protection District practiced racial discrimination and retaliation against black former fire inspectors.

The suit alleges that former inspectors Ephraim Woods Jr. and Lamont Downer were demoted in June 2004 because of their race, and because they had filed charges of racial discrimination and retaliation against the department with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

A man at the fire department said only the assistant fire chief could comment on the suit, and he was not available late Tuesday.

The Justice Department should be suing St. Louis City’s Fire Department, and Chief Sherman George in particular. They’re doing everything they can not to promote mostly white firefighters to Captain ranks, because there are too few blacks in the group that actually passed the tests and thus deserve the promotions. Even the Federal judiciary found that the tests were non-discriminatory.

Mayor Slay:

FOCUS St. Louis has launched a new Internet venue at which it hopes to encourage public discourse on issues of concern to its members. To help get the conversation started, FOCUS asked me to post a note on their new forum about the issue of regional cooperation.

Here are some of the issues I raised there:

My administration and the City’s public and private partners have received national and international recognition for St. Louis’s renaissance. We have improved the quality of life in our historic neighborhoods, revitalized downtown, focused on public education, poverty, homelessness, and improved the delivery of city services. Because of renewed confidence in the City and its future, property values have gone up by almost 70 percent. Best of all, for the first time in five decades, the City’s population is growing.

Property values are up in the city because of a combination of low interest rates (which drives property values up virtually everywhere), and a temporary renewed yuppie interest in certain city neighborhoods that have great historical value but have managed to remain mostly white. The city population is “growing” because Census Bureau estimates are counting phantom individuals as if they really lived in the city.

As we have worked to improve the City, I have begun to explore more cooperation with St. Louis County. But even talk of cooperating on projects like the rebuilding of Highway 40, Metro, and our airport, elicits concerns from some residents of both the City and the county.

The “rebuilding of Highway 40″ is a state concern; the only reason Slay thinks it has anything to do with city-county cooperation is that the project happens to take place in both jurisdictions. Lambert Airport is St. Louis City property, and City Hall has resisted all efforts to expropriate it and place it in the hands of a metropolitan governing council.

Cooperation, they worry, is only a step away from merger – and merger could mean changes in governance. Some City residents worry that that the larger and more homogenous population in the county would out-vote the gains we’ve made to empower and celebrate our diverse city population. Some county residents worry that a municipality as large as the City would upset the balance of power maintained among the county’s many political subdivisions.

While I understand the worries of both sets of friends, I believe that the worries are dwarfed by the realities. The county’s ability to address its undoubted problems is exacerbated by its patchwork of municipalities. The City’s growth is constrained by the undeniably anemic nature of its tax base. We’d all be better off in the same boat.

I don’t expect that we will be undertaking a voyage together anytime soon. But it is probably time to start studying the charts.

In other words, Mayor Slay is greasing the skids for a city-county merger. It won’t be long before the county is as liberal as the city, so they’ll deserve each other.

Schlafly:

P-16 is a rather new term meaning that Big Brother government is now supervising the next generation from pre-school through the 16th year of education (i.e., college graduation). We used to think K-12 (kindergarten through 12th grade) was the scope of government schools.

It appears that a major purpose of this audacious legislation is the establishment of a “P-16 education longitudinal data system.” The plan is to enter all children into the government’s database while they are in pre-school and then track them all the way through college.

States will be induced (bribed) to cooperate in this expansion of federal power by grants from a $100,000,000 pot of federal money in only the first year.

The P-16 data system will have a “unique identifier” for each child that will be retained from pre-school through college. The database will include, among other things, “information about the points at which students exit, transfer in, transfer out, drop out, or complete P-16 programs,” “test records,” “information on courses completed and grades earned,” and how students “transitioned” from high school to college.

If the typical four years of undergraduate school is now a de facto Federal educational responsibility that future college students should be tracked to an individual, then it should be free of charge, and graduates shouldn’t leave school and start a career with a six-figure debt load. Do you think that’s part of this bill? I doubt it.

Breitbart/Agence France Presse:

Sweden struggles to integrate Muslim immigrants

Sweden has welcomed immigrants with open arms for decades but now it is grappling with how to integrate them into society, especially in the southern town of Malmoe amid a massive influx of refugees.

Once a thriving industrial town with full employment, Malmoe has seen many of its plants shut down since the 1990s. That, combined with a never-ending stream of foreigners arriving, has led to rising juvenile delinquency and rampant unemployment.

Of the town’s 280,000 inhabitants, a third are foreigners and 60,000 are Muslims.

(snip)

“We are an open city. We see these immigrants as a resource for our society,” Malmoe’s Social Democratic mayor Ilmar Reepalu told AFP.

(snip)

“Immigrants to Sweden have become political refugees. First there were people from South America, then Iran, Afghanistan and now Iraq,” he said.

“They come seeking asylum and not work,” he said.

He recalled the Scandinavian country’s generous humanitarian policies which provide immigrants with everything they need once they arrive.

(snip)

New arrivals tend to settle where they already have friends and family members, leading Swedes to desert some areas, such as Malmoe’s southeastern neighbourhood of Rosengaard.

(snip)

“That’s the case in the United States, France and Britain and now in Sweden, although at different levels,” he stressed.

If nothing is done, he said, the situation in Sweden could explode within 10 or 20 years, as it already has in other parts of Europe.

(snip)

The neighbourhood is clean, with plenty of greenery providing a nice backdrop for the modern brick buildings. But sprouting from every balcony or rooftop is a satellite dish, broadcasting programs for faraway countries.

Middle Eastern Muslims in Sweden are recreating their home countries in Sweden.  One can imply from this article that the good progressive Swedes thought that non-white immigration would go so much better there because the whites in Sweden are so much more liberal, and far more compassionate, than those backwards knuckledraggers in the rest of the white world.

If “assimilation” happens in Sweden, it will be because the definition of the concept will be diluted, and that the famous white leftist governments in the Sweden will harshly criminalize and repress any white conservative opposition to diversity and immigration and Islamification of the country.

The Blotter by ABC:

The FBI is investigating an alleged human smuggling operation based in Chaparral, N.M., that agents say is bringing “Iraqis and other Middle Eastern” individuals across the Rio Grande from Mexico.

An FBI intelligence report distributed by the Washington, D.C. Joint Terrorism Task Force, obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com, says the illegal ring has been bringing Iraqis across the border illegally for more than a year.

Border Patrol officials in the area said they were unaware of the specifics of the FBI’s report, and federal prosecutors in New Mexico told ABCNews.com they had no current cases involving the illegal smuggling of Iraqis.

Also unaware of this fact is President Bush, who apparently figures that we don’t need border security or a border fence.

“The Political Cesspool,” the wildly popular Memphis-based radio show heard weeknights from 7-9 PM on WLRM-AM-1380 in Memphis, and streamed over the internet, is currently in negotiations to become nationally syndicated.  Stay tuned, this could get very interesting.

Breitbart/AP:

LANSDOWNE, Pa. (AP) - A 13-year-old boy fatally stabbed his brother with a steak knife after the 16-year-old refused to turn over a video game controller, authorities said.

Jahmir Ricks was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Antwan Ricks at their home outside Philadelphia. The older boy died of a single stab wound to the chest, police said, and a bent and bloody knife was recovered from the home.

Lansdowne police said the younger boy told them, “I just stabbed my brother,” when they arrived at the home Sunday.

Police believe the argument started when Antwan Ricks would not turn over the game controller after losing a game to his brother. Police Chief Daniel Kortan said the rules of the house were that the person who lost had to give someone else a chance to play.

There are no photos of the suspect or victim with this story, but with names like “Jahmir” and “Antwan,” the race of the suspect and the victim should be obvious.

Prediction #12 for 2007, by this blogmeister in another medium, on January 1:

12. The big semi-circular hole north of New Busch Stadium in downtown St. Louis that exists on January 1, 2007, will still be there unmolested on December 31, 2007.

The state of Missouri and its Development Finance Board is in the process today of deciding whether the state will grant tax breaks for the project. If it has taken this long to make a decision at the state level, it is highly doubtful that any dirt will be turned at the big hole in the ground before the end of the year, even if they do approve.

The “Si Se Puede” crowd had 3,000, so claim the MSM.  But the Waukegan, Ill. City Council approved the deportation enforcement scheme by an 8-2 vote, all six whites voting for it, and the two each of black and Hispanic members were split 1-1.

Illinois wants another $1 per pack, and the Federal government wants another $10 per premium cigar, both tax increases would fund children’s health care programs.

Therefore, adults will have to make themselves less healthy so children can be more healthy.

As far as the cigars, I think the $10 per unit proposal is part of a good cop-bad cop ploy among Congressional Democrats to grease the skids for a tax increase that is far less than $10, but more than the current five-cent tax. Left-wing politicans pull this stunt all the time; they deliberately propose ridiculous measures that they know can’t win, and they, with the help of the media, create the illusion that those measures actually could pass. That brings moderates and conservatives to the bargaining table, to negotiate a “compromise” measure, which then passes, and the “compromise” is what the left wanted to begin with, but could have never gotten without their dog and pony show tricks.

The running joke in the late 1990s that if President Clinton proposed a measure to implode the Capital building, the Republicans in Congress would have introduced an alternate plan to phase it in over five years.

KSDK-NBC-5:

There is only about a month to go before the first day of school in St. Louis and as the city public school district prepares for its first year without accreditation, it may also notice a significant decrease in enrollment.

There is a scholarship program could put public school students in private schools.

One hundred tuition scholarships to Catholic elementary schools will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis to St. Louis kindergarten students. The scholarships are worth at least $2,000.

The Today and Tomorrow Educational Foundation already provides scholarships for older students.

“The cost to educate one child is about $4,000 per child. The Today and Tomorrow Foundation will pay $2,000 of that. … It’s on a needs basis. It depends on (parents’) ability to pay,” said Kevin Short, president of the organization’s board of directors.

The St. Louis Public School District expects to lose more than 1,000 students to private schools — especially charter schools — in the fall. But they are not anticipating that there will be a mass exodus to other schools.

Thirteen of the 16 districts in St. Louis County, the three decliners being Ladue, Lindbergh and Pattonville, will accept SLPS transfer students during the years when the SLPS is disaccredited.

In the past 24 hours, both KSDK-5 and KTVI-2 have had stories about a recent rash of assaults against Metro (formerly Bi-State) Bus Drivers. For instance, one woman driver had a brick hurled at her by a belligerent intoxicated passenger.

While Metro officials dismiss the incidents as isolated, the head of the union that represents Metro drivers states that it is actually an epidemic, and that drivers are forced to deal with many passengers that are drunk, high on drugs, mentally ill, or a combination thereof. He recommended that Metro hire more uniformed security officers.

Metro Link light rail operators have not been victimized in this rash of incidents, because they are protected by locking doors and glass shields.

Metro operates public bus service exclusively in St. Louis City and County.