St. Louis CofCC Blog

A new tax plan, proposed by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), and considered an HRC trial balloon, would place a surtax of 4% on the “rich” (i.e. incomes over $150,000 a year).

This is coming from the same politician that recently voted to expand a childrens’ health insurance program in a way that would have defined “poor” as an $83,000 annual income.

Therefore, in Rangellogic, you’re poor at $82,999, but filthy rich at $150,001.  This doesn’t leave much room to be defined as middle class.

AP:  [New Orleans] Mayor: State May Take Over DA Office

If diversity is such a strengh, then why does the “weaker” state government feel the need to take over the “stronger” Orleans Parish D.A. office?

P-D:  Ga. teen released on sex charge wants to attend college

I highly doubt Joshua Widner will be a sociologist or a businessman — no affirmative action pity for him.

Reuters:  Serial jailbreaker [from Belgium] escapes for fourth time

His name is Nordin Benallal, but he might change it to Michel Scofiellde

LiveScience:   A Culture that Capitalism Can’t Crush

An admission that capitalism crushes cultures.

AP:   Edwards labels Clinton an insider

He did so from inside his mansion.

Reuters:   [American Bar Association] urges death penalty moratorium

Dateline October 29, 2009:  The President of the American Bar Association was killed today by an escaped prison inmate, who was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder, and sentenced to the maximum possible punishment of prison for life without parole.

Or maybe Chicago is a northern extension of the Mississippi Delta.

USA Today:

Chicago-based youth street gangs have been a problem in the Mississippi Delta since the 1980s, thanks to family connections between the regions dating back to the Great Migration of the 1940s and 1950s. Recently federal authorities have cracked down on gangs in an attempt to shut down a pipeline that sends guns to the North and drugs back South, says Randall Samborn, an assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago.

(snip)

“We are trying to send a message that we don’t want guns from Mississippi in Chicago,” says Samborn.

(snip)

A big reason the gangs seem to flourish in this area is that the Delta is fertile ground. Andrew Papachristos, a sociologist at University of Massachusetts Amherst who has studied gangs for 15 years, says street gangs evolve over time and become institutionalized in communities, particularly in areas where young men have few other opportunities.

Yet, there are a lot of opportunities in Chicago, but this has not precluded these black gangs from starting there, and thanks to “family connections” to the Mississippi Delta, spreading to the kinfolk there.

One shouldn’t be surprised that drugs and guns get the blame, but not the human beings.  And the Federal, and not the state, government is portrayed as the savior.  The trouble is that, before the Federal government thought it had the solution to everything, the state and local authorities did a very good job of crime suppression.

In 1900, Mississippi was (and still is) the blackest state in the union in terms of percentage of the whole (and recall that the “Great Migration” didn’t happen until mid-century, so it was higher than it is today, perhaps near half), and yet, it had the lowest murder rate of any state in the country.  Now it has the highest murder rate.  Looks like the Feds aren’t doing that well.

As an aside, black gangs in East St. Louis, Ill., reflect those in Chicago, while those in St. Louis reflect Los Angeles black gangs.  The reason that the river makes such a difference is that blacks in East St. Louis who are sent to state prison are obviously sent to Illinois prisons, where they mixed with Chicago’s blacks sent to state prison, and the Chicago gang culture spread to East St. Louis.  A black in East St. Louis is more likely to have contact with a black from Chicago than a black from across the river, for that reason.  In contrast, St. Louis’s blacks adopted L.A.’s gang culture because of certain movies and music.

AP:

WASHINGTON - It’s a nickname no principal could be proud of: “Dropout Factory,” a high school where no more than 60 percent of the students who start as freshmen make it to their senior year. That description fits more than one in 10 high schools across America.

“If you’re born in a neighborhood or town where the only high school is one where graduation is not the norm, how is this living in the land of equal opportunity?” asks Bob Balfanz, the Johns Hopkins researcher who coined the term “dropout factory.”

There are about 1,700 regular or vocational high schools nationwide that fit that description, according to an analysis of Education Department data conducted by Johns Hopkins for The Associated Press. That’s 12 percent of all such schools, about the same level as a decade ago.

While some of the missing students transferred, most dropped out, says Balfanz. The data look at senior classes for three years in a row to make sure local events like plant closures aren’t to blame for the low retention rates.

The highest concentration of dropout factories is in large cities or high-poverty rural areas in the South and Southwest. Most have high proportions of minority students. These schools are tougher to turn around because their students face challenges well beyond the academic ones — the need to work as well as go to school, for example, or a need for social services.

Utah, which has low poverty rates and fewer minorities than most states, is the only state without a dropout factory. Florida and South Carolina have the highest percentages.

If reducing the dropout rate and ensuring that everyone has a high school diploma is the only thing that matters, then the solution is easy — in schools designated as “dropout factories,” give every young man and woman a high school diploma as a privilege of reaching his or her 17th or 18th birthday.

“What? This would dilute the value of a high school diploma?” Where have you been? I guess you’ve been sleeping under a rock while standards and curricula have been diluted for several decades.

UPDATE 10/30:  Here are the “dropout factories” in the St. Louis Metro Area.  Of these high schools, only Bayless and Northwest (Jefferson Co.) are majority white.

Bayless (St. Louis County, Bayless S.D.)
McCluer (St. Louis County, Ferguson-Florissant S.D.)
Normandy (St. Louis County, Normandy S.D.)
Northwest (Jefferson Co., Northwest S.D.)
Beaumont (SLPS)
Central VPA (SLPS)
Cleveland NJROTC (SLPS)
Gateway (SLPS)
Roosevelt (SLPS)
Soldan (SLPS)

Normandy was once the most desirable school district in north St. Louis County.  Gateway in St. Louis City is considered the second most desirable high school in the city system.