after

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS

Affordable Housing Is Slow To Recover After Disasters Like Hurricanes, And What Communities Can Do About It – 4 Reasons Why

How a community recovers after a disaster like Hurricane Ian is often a “chicken and egg” question: Which returns first – businesses or households? Businesses need employees and customers to be able to function. Households need jobs and the services businesses provide. As an urban planning researcher who focuses on housing recovery after disasters, I have found in my research that they’re mutually dependent. However, in coastal communities, the recovery of tourism-based businesses like restaurants and hotels depends in large part on the return of affordable housing for employees. Rockport, Texas, where Hurricane Harvey made landfall in 2017, is an example of the challenge. It’s a small community that caters to vacationers and sport fishermen, including celebrities like country singer Ge...

Scapegoating Rap Hits New Low After July Fourth Mass Shooting

4Apr

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IN OTHER NEWS

Scapegoating Rap Hits New Low After July Fourth Mass Shooting

When local police named 22-year-old Robert E. Crimo III as “a person of interest” in the July 4 mass shootings in an affluent Chicago suburb, several news outlets described him in headlines as a “rapper.” A Washington Post headline read “Robert Crimo III, ‘Awake the Rapper,’ arrested in Highland Park shooting.” A Vice News headline read “Police Arrest Local Rapper in Connection to Highland Park Mass Shooting.” In addition to the headlines, media outlets noted that Crimo had musical references to mass shootings on his social media accounts as well as crude drawings depicting violence. But none of these justify the use of “rap” or “rapper” in describing Crimo’s alleged criminal behavior — and everything to do with criminalizing rap and rappers. In my view, referring to this genre of musi...

Texas Attorney General Suggests Arming Teachers, After Uvalde School Shooting, Educators Disagree

4Apr

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IN OTHER NEWS

Texas Attorney General Suggests Arming Teachers, After Uvalde School Shooting, Educators Disagree

After an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers — and injured 17 others — at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, said arming teachers could prevent more mass atrocities at schools in the future. “We can’t stop bad people from doing bad things,” he told Fox News. “We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly. … That, in my opinion, is the best answer.” Paxton’s response is not a new one. After a school shooting claimed the lives of 17 students and adults in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, then-President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos also expressed support for giving guns to teachers. More than 15 states, including Texas, allow teachers, security pe...

So Rich Folks Aren’t Stingy As F**k After All?

22May

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

MONEY

So Rich Folks Aren’t Stingy As F**k After All?

At least half of American families have been giving money to charity every year – but that fraction had been declining prior to the global pandemic. We’re living in a very different world now. Millions are unemployed, the needs of nonprofits are ballooning and there are constant appeals for donations on social media and television. It’s still unclear how charitable giving will change. But one thing is the same: Massive donations by the rich and famous are making the same big splash they always do. Take, for example, the recent group of billionaires who are donating to pandemic relief. The growing list of these high-profile givers includes established philanthropists like Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who runs a big foundation along with his wife Melinda Gates, and Alibaba founder J...

A Historic Black Community Races To Save Its Future Six Months After Hurricane Ida

2Apr

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IN OTHER NEWS

A Historic Black Community Races To Save Its Future Six Months After Hurricane Ida

Briana Flin Residents of Ironton, Louisiana are rallying for their share of recovery funds. Audrey Trufant Salvant has deep roots in Ironton, a close-knit, majority-Black community 25 miles downriver from New Orleans. Her great-great-great grandmother, who had been enslaved, is buried here, and her descendents kept the unincorporated town in Plaquemines Parish alive, despite near-impossible circumstances. Founded by formerly enslaved people in the late 1800s, Ironton’s residents have since endured racial terror, segregationist parish leaders, and decades without even the most basic services. But they fought to survive. They gained access to running water in 1980 and rebuilt the town after Hurricanes Katrina and Isaac in 2005 and 2012, respectively. Today, residents say devastation from...

After A Minneapolis Death A Relic Of The ‘War On Drugs’ No-Knock Warrants, Face Renewed Criticism

10Feb

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IN OTHER NEWS, LAW ENFORCEMENT

After A Minneapolis Death A Relic Of The ‘War On Drugs’ No-Knock Warrants, Face Renewed Criticism

Protests in Minneapolis over the death of a 22-year-old man during a police raid have reignited debate over the role of so-called “no-knock warrants.” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey imposed a moratorium on the practice, in which police obtain permission to enter a premises unannounced, and often accompanied by heavily armed SWAT teams. As a former police officer, I took part in no-knock raids. Often they offered little return – my team ended up empty-handed, with no real criminal evidence. I now teach criminal justice and police ethics and have observed that the use of no-knock warrants has increasingly become a concern for those demanding criminal justice reform. Obtaining a ‘no-knock’ can be a low bar No-knock warrants are an exception to the “knock and announce” rule, a common law polic...

Women In Congress Still Fear For Their Security A Year After January 6

5Jan

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS, POLITICS

Women In Congress Still Fear For Their Security A Year After January 6

Rep. Nikema Williams does not like to talk about that day — she’s still dealing with the emotion and fear. What should have marked a celebratory first week in Congress will be remembered for an attack on democracy, and elected officials, as hundreds of supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop certification of the election. On January 6, 2021, the new Georgia representative hid in her office as the building went on lockdown. Since then, Williams has hired personal security and made safety changes that she won’t discuss in detail in order to protect her family. But even with that — plus a year of public outcry, internal investigations and congressional hearings to examine the security failures during the Capitol attack — Williams still feels u...

After The Sandy Hook Shootings, Conspiracy Theories In The US Became More Personal, More Cruel And More Mainstream

10Dec

By THEIRL1ADMIN011 Comment

POLITICS

After The Sandy Hook Shootings, Conspiracy Theories In The US Became More Personal, More Cruel And More Mainstream

Conspiracy theories are powerful forces in the U.S. They have damaged public health amid a global pandemic, shaken faith in the democratic process and helped spark a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021. These conspiracy theories are part of a dangerous misinformation crisis that has been building for years in the U.S. American politics has long had a paranoid streak, and belief in conspiracy theories is nothing new. But as the news cycle reminds us daily, outlandish conspiracy theories born on social media now regularly achieve mainstream acceptance and are echoed by people in power. As a journalism professor at the University of Connecticut, I have studied the misinformation around the mass shooting that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012. I c...

It’s A Book That Will Stay With You Long After You’ve Reached The Last Page.” The Book Review Café

21Nov

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BOOK3, BOOKS

It’s A Book That Will Stay With You Long After You’ve Reached The Last Page.” The Book Review Café

Marion Kummerow - Not Without My Sister 1944, Germany. Two sisters seek to overcome impossible odds to be reunited, in this utterly devastating and unforgettable novel about sisterhood, courage and survival. All they had left was each other. Until the Nazis tore them apart. After years of hiding from the Nazis, Rachel Epstein and her little sister Mindel are captured by the Gestapo and sent to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. The only ray of light for either girl is that they are together. But on arrival they are separated. As she’s seventeen and deemed an adult, Rachel is sent to work in a brutal factory whilst four-year-old Mindel is sent into the so-called “star” camp for Jewish prisoners. All on her own, Rachel knows her sister will have no chance of survival—unless she can ...

One Of America’s Deepest Downturns Was Also Its Shortest After COVID-19 Recession Bailout Bounceback

4Apr

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Journalism

One Of America’s Deepest Downturns Was Also Its Shortest After COVID-19 Recession Bailout Bounceback

Jay L. Zagorsky, Boston University Thanks to a roaring economy, plunging joblessness and a consumer spending spree, it probably won’t come as a surprise that the COVID-19 recession is officially over. We didn’t know this, formally, however, until July 19, 2021, when a group of America’s top economists determined that the pandemic recession ended two months after it began, making it the shortest downturn on record. As an economist who has written a macroeconomics textbook, I was eagerly waiting to know the official dates. This is in part because I recently asked my Boston University MBA students to make guesses, and we all wanted to know who was closest to the mark. While many of my students ended up nailing it, I was off by a month. But why did it take over a year to learn the recessio...