Michael Vick: This is More Than About Football!

Hey People,

In the last few weeks, we have heard some interest comments from different people about Michael Vick. Tucker Carlson said that Vick should have been executed for the dog crimes he committed. Charles Barkley said that Vick served his time and hopes he does well in the NFL playoffs.


Everyone has a different opinion about the Vick situation. I think we all can agree that Vick's story is more than about Football. It is about the power of redemption.



Vick has apologized for his involvement in the dog fighting ring he promoted. He's paid his debt to society by serving eighteen months in prison.  As a professional in the locker room and family man off the field, he has worked hard to right the wrongs he inflicted in the past. Mr. Vick has served at a Boys and Girls club and speaks to children on behalf of the Humane Society warning them not to make the same mistakes he has. He's even expressed interest in owning his own dog in the future.


Will Vick ever get total forgiveness from everyone?  I don't know.


I do believe that the power of redemption has a way of changing people. That is a good start.
 






Present:

HELP!! Our Schools Are Drowing!!

Hey,

Somebody help me understand this...

California's schools are in a state of financial emergency, according to the state's education chief, Tom Torlakson. The State Superintendent of Public Instruction spoke to reporters about the challenges facing California's schools at a press conference in Sacramento Thursday.


Torlakson said that $18 billion dollars in cuts over the last three years have taken a heavy toll on the state's schools. He said that a California Department of Education survey conducted last year found that 58% of school districts have cut educational material; 48% have cut nursing and counseling staff; and 35% have increased class size while reducing the number of teachers. Nearly half of the state's districts have reduced employee pay, according to Torlakson.

Now, the idea that a good education will make our country stronger is suppose to be solidly engrained in our national culture. So why are we reducing funding for our schools?

There is a clear relationship between schooling and the risks of unemployment and crime.  Increase in formal schooling are almost invariably accompanied by lower unemployment rates and crime. According to the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), roughly 1 million youth aged 16 to 19 who required serious help in the labor market, at least 44 percent had severe educational deficiencies and were illiterate. These facts lend to support to the view that the crime and job problem that we face result mainly from a mismatch between poorly educated jobseekers and the increasingly sophisticated jobs in the market. The best way to attack this problem is through continued education and training.

The Power of Education, folks..

Homeless Man With The Magic Voice! Somebody Give this Man a Job!

Hey People,

Another busy day on the grind is coming to a close. But hey, I am grateful and thankful! I am especially grateful for the house over my head, the clothes on my back, the food in my stomach and my family. There are a lot of people out there who are just trying to survive. Like the homeless. I have never been homeless so, I could never truly understand the pain of a homeless person. I just know that we have too many homeless people in our cities.


According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, there were 643,067 sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons nationwide on a single night in January 2008. Additionally, about 1.6 million persons used an emergency shelter or a transitional housing program during the 12-month period between October 1, 2007 and September 30, 2008. This number suggests that roughly 1 in every 200 persons in the US used the shelter system at some point in that period. The federal government is currently promoting a 10-year plan approach to end homelessness which targets those who are "chronically" homeless—defined as, "An unaccompanied homeless individual with a disabling condition who has either been continuously homeless for a year or has had at least four (4) episodes of homelessness in the past three (3) years." Many direct service providers are concerned that such a definition will exclude the majority of those who experience homelessness from receiving needed services. This is probably why we see more and more homeless people on corners trying to earn a buck. Check out this homeless guy in the video. We all need to use our power to find a job for this guy. 

My First Blog! Let's Talk About Jobs

Well Gang,

This is my first blog for 2011 and I decided to choose a topic that is near and dear to my heart, J.O.B.S! 

 

 As you know already, the United States unemployment rate was last reported at 9.80 percent in November of 2010. According to Trading Economics.com, the number of unemployed people was 15.1 million in November. The unemployment rate edged up to 9.8 percent; it was 9.6 percent in each of the prior 3 months.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men were 10.0 percent, adult women were 8.4 percent, whites were 8.9 percent, and Hispanics (13.2 percent) edged up in November. The jobless rate for blacks (16.0 percent) showed little change over the month, while the rate for teenagers declined to 24.6 percent. The jobless rate for Asians was 7.6 percent, not seasonally adjusted.

 

Work, or the lack of work, shapes the way we all live our lives. So it does not surprise me nor should it surprise you that the significant gains for some groups coupled with the stagnation of other groups is intimately connected to the kinds of jobs members of those groups have held. American minorities have made real gains in breaking into jobs that were mostly held by American whites. Furthermore, the chances of American minorities getting high-level jobs with good pay are considerably better than they have been in the past. But there is a underside to this progress.....

While the proportion of minority lawyers, bank managers, and engineers has risen, so has the proportion who are unemployed (IE according to the statics on Trading Economics.com). Joblessness has become a major crisis for American minorities. Minority unemployment rates are far higher than those of American whites.  Some researchers have attributed these trends mainly to the high rates of family breakup among minority groups. Although this may be a part of the explanation, it isn't all of it. Whatever the family structure may be, American minorities tend to have lower incomes and greater risks of poverty than American whites.

 

The decline and outsourcing of American industry jobs to other countries has also threaten the gains that American minorities have made. The lack of jobs is also compounded by low earnings for American minority workers who are employed. Some of the disparity between American minority and white earnings can be explained by educational differences and geographical concentrations. But these factors leave much of the earnings difference unexplained.

As Americans, we all have the power to find new ways to bridge the occupational status and the economic gap between American minorities and whites. The question is will we use it?