Government

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July 8, 2011 | 11:47 AM | By

Latest Government Job Cuts May Hit African Americans Hardest

 

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

The latest jobs report released Friday shows that unemployment has risen from 9.1 to 9.2 percent, with government jobs getting the most cuts. And such public sector losses disproportionately affect African Americans, given that a larger percentage of working black adults hold government jobs than working white or Hispanic adults [PDF].

June saw the loss of 39,000 government jobs. And the June unemployment rate for whites was 8.1 percent; for blacks, it was 16.2 percent; and for Hispanics, 11.6 percent. The huge public sector losses may be contributing to the disparity in unemployment rates, reports Huffington Post‘s Janell Ross:

The loss of government paychecks erodes one of the great equalizing forces at play in the American economy for more than a century. A government job has long offered a pathway for African Americans to sidestep discrimination that has impeded progress in the private sector, where social networks often determine who has a shot at the best jobs, say experts….

“Many of the black people you don’t hear about on the news, the black people who own homes, who can afford to send their children to college and have modest savings, many of them worked for some branch of government before the recession began,” said Steven Pitts, a labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education. “There is good reason to be very concerned about what will happen when this work disappears.”

D.C.’s unemployment rate was 9.8 percent in May. But the rates differ ward-by-ward [PDF]. The District’s poorest and nearly all-black wards saw May unemployment range between 16.8 and 24.9 percent. Conversely, the city’s wealthiest, and whitest, ward saw a May rate of 2.6 percent.

FILED UNDER: Government, Economy, Unemployment
June 29, 2011 | 4:44 PM | By

Online Gambling in D.C: Who Will Lose Money?

Bruno Vincent/Getty Images

D.C-sponsored online gambling will begin late this summer, which is intended to boost city coffers. The measure also raises questions over whether the poor will end up losing money through state-sponsored gambling.

Other forms of state-sponsored gambling have drawn ire from those who feel they unfairly target poor people, as was the case in Maryland and its debate over slot machines. The lottery is described by some as a tax on the poor since low-income earners typically spend more of their income on lottery tickets than people in the middle and upper classes.

WAMU’s Patrick Madden reports that D.C. Lottery officials believe online gamblers will have above-average incomes; the intention is to target tourists and amateurs. Gaming would be restricted to $250 stakes, a pot that isn’t appealing to professional poker players. Councilman Jack Evans (Ward 2) said online gaming would make it easier for people to lose their money; the city’s chief financial officer responded that the demographic concerns over who would lose money in online gambling are the same concerns over who loses money in playing the lottery.

There are some stipulations that could prevent people from getting in over their heads. Gamblers wouldn’t be able to use credit cards, only debit cards. Gambling would be restricted to those who are at least 19 years old and physically located in the District through laptops connected to “hot spots.” The exact locations of those hot spots, though, haven’t been determined yet.

FILED UNDER: Government, Class, Online gambling
June 27, 2011 | 2:10 PM | By

Former Principal Speaks about White Families and DCPS

Wendy Carlson/Getty Images

A Washington Post profile of an outgoing D.C. Public Schools elementary school principal provides some insight into the racial divisions in school enrollment. Bill Kerlina left his post as principal of Phoebe Hearst Elementary School, located in the mostly white Ward 3, due to what he calls the dysfunction of the school system.

Hearst’s student body was comprised of mostly out-of-boundary black students. A few days before he quit, Kerlina received a positive evaluation from an instruction superintendent who asked him why there were not more white families at the school. Kerlina wrote back to the superintendent to lay out “a taxonomy of Northwest parents in an effort to show the hurdles to recruiting more neighborhood families:”

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FILED UNDER: Education, DCPS, Race and Class
June 14, 2011 | 5:19 PM | By

Meal Service for D.C.’s Seniors Resumes Full Operations

Flickr: Rich Moffitt

Nutrition Inc., the food service company that delivers meals to D.C.’s home-bound seniors, shut down last week, leaving District officials scrambling to fill the void.

The company, which may have to file for bankruptcy, notified the D.C. Office on Aging of its impending closure a few days before the service stopped. The District is now relying on temporary vendors to fill in and has started looking for a new, permanent one. Initially, about 300 seniors who were the most vulnerable were given priority immediately after Nutrition, Inc.’s closure. The Washington Post reports that there was some disruption in services.

Now John Thompson, the Office of Aging’s acting executive director, tells DCentric that as of this week, everyone should be receiving their meals as normal. Service centers and new vendors have been running spot checks to ensure everyone who should be receiving a meal is getting one.

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FILED UNDER: Government, Food, Seniors
June 6, 2011 | 4:20 PM | By

Lawsuit Alleges Councilman Bought Audi with Money Meant for Youth Baseball

Drew Hallowell/Getty Images

For those disheartened by the cuts in funding for youth programming this summer may want to pay close attention to a lawsuit brought against Councilman Harry Thomas, Jr. (Ward 5).

The D.C. Children & Youth Investment Trust Corporation, which doles out money to youth-oriented programming, has less money to give out this summer, meaning more District youth will be without structured activities. Three years ago, the group gave out $4 million to summer programs; given recent budget cuts, this year they only be able to give $1 million.

An earmark from the group is now tied up in a lawsuit brought by D.C. Attorney General Irv Nathan, reports WAMU’s Patrick Madden. Nathan “says he is seeking to recover more than $300,000 that was supposed to help youth baseball which Nathan alleges ended up being used for Thomas’ own personal and political uses.”

The Washington City Paper reports that according to the lawsuit, back in 2008, Thomas steered “$316,000 of a $400,000 earmark from the D.C. Children & Youth Investment Trust Corporation to the non-profit Langston 21st Century Foundation, which, at Thomas’ direction, gave the money to Thomas’ non-profit and the for-profit version of Team Thomas.”

So how was that money, intended for youth baseball, then used? The lawsuit alleges that Thomas directed $75,000 in checks be given to him, which were he then put into his bank account. Shortly thereafter Thomas bought himself a $59,000 Audi.

During a press conference today, Thomas denied allegations of wrong-doing and vowed to clear his name.

FILED UNDER: Government, Harry Thomas Jr., Youth
June 3, 2011 | 1:38 PM | By

Tweet of the Day, 06.03

Is there something wrong with assuming that a person who earns $200K+ is rich in DC?
June 3, 2011 12:52 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite
@kojoshow
The Kojo Nnamdi Show

This tweet references the now-defeated proposed income tax hike on District residents who make more than $200,000 annually.

FILED UNDER: Government
May 31, 2011 | 4:25 PM | By

A College Degree Doesn’t Mean You’ll Get a Job, Especially if You’re Black

The jobless rate for black men ages 16 to 19 is 45 percent. The Washington Post chronicles the job hunt of one black male teen, Kenneth Roberson of Memphis. The recent Booker T. Washington High school graduate was a top-ranked student at his school, which was described by President Barrack Obama as one of the nation’s most inspiring.

For Roberson, the implications of 45 percent are more immediate and more personal. It means a 45 percent chance he will have to borrow money for school or risk forgoing his partial scholarship to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; a 45 percent chance that he will be stuck without a car in a house with his mother and four siblings, sleeping on a futon in the room he shares with his brother; a 45 percent chance that he will go “crazy or something,” he said, “because I hate sitting in the house and having that feeling of just waiting around and being worthless.”

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty

President Obama greets Christopher Dean during Booker T. Washington High School's May 2011 graduation ceremony. Obama called the school one of the country's most inspiring.

Roberson and his peers face an uphill battle in trying to find jobs to help pay for school. But what if he was a little older and already had his college degree — would finding a job be more difficult for him than for a white college graduate?

Colorlines has posted a number of illuminating graphics that indicate, yes: Jobless rates are much higher for black and Latino college graduates than their white peers. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the jobless rate for black college graduates under 25 was 19 percent in 2010. For whites, it was 8.4 percent. Colorlines reports:

Even among those who’ve made the right choices—be it finishing high school or loading up debt to get a college degree—jobless rates are shocking. And the longstanding racial disparity among college graduates has grown markedly worse in the course of the downturn.

In D.C. as a whole, the unemployment rate was 9.6 percent in April, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. But in predominately black Wards 7 and 8, it’s as high as 20 percent. And teens looking for work may be out of luck this summer, as the city’s summer jobs program faces funding cuts and will be accepting 8,000 fewer youth than last year.

FILED UNDER: Education, The People, Race, Unemployment
May 19, 2011 | 1:01 PM | By

SNAP, WIC, EBT — What’s the Difference?

Flickr: National Museum of American History

Historic food stamps at the Smithsonian.

In February of this year, 44 million people received federal dollars for their food budgets– over 4 million more Americans compared to the same month in 2010. The government is issuing food stamps to one out of every six D.C. residents. As DCentric prepares to look into food disparity in D.C., we broke out the differences between terms associated with government-subsidized food and payment methods.

SNAP/Food stamps: Food stamps were renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP in 2008, the goal of the program is to help recipients maintain healthy diets by making relatively expensive items like fresh fruits and vegetables accessible to those with low incomes. Applying for SNAP in some states requires pay stubs, housing information, utility bills, child support orders and bills for child or elder care. SNAP is administered by the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These benefits are for food; They do not cover items like pet food or toiletries. A list of guidelines from the USDA on what can be purchased is below.

WIC: The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children helps prevent or decrease premature births by supplementing the diets of pregnant women. It is also available to mothers of infants and children up to age five. WIC pays for essential items like milk, eggs and baby formula. WIC benefits are often distributed as specially-designed checks and may be used for a limited list of foods. That’s why, in some cases, families receive both WIC and help from other programs, like SNAP. WIC recipients are required to learn about pre-natal nutrition and breastfeeding.

EBT: Electronic Benefits Transfer cards are a federally-funded payment option offered at participating stores. SNAP distributes funds for purchasing food via EBT cards. EBT cards are more dicreet because of their resemblance to debit cards.

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FILED UNDER: Government, Food, Money
May 10, 2011 | 11:11 AM | By

‘Arts Are For The Wealthy?’

Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

Children's Chorus of Washington is one D.C.-based arts organization facing a possible 6 percent ticket tax.

The latest piece in the D.C. budget debate: whether art patrons will have to pay a 6 percent tax on ticket sales.

The current proposal, if approved, would tax arts and performance tickets in the District (except those put on by federal institutions). The Washington City Paper reports that among those who testified against the tax Monday was Linda Levy Grossman, president and CEO of the Helen Hayes Awards, who had this to say:

Grossman said the “inaccurate assumption” that arts patrons have the spare cash to pay more for a ticket “further perpetuates the erroneous assumption that arts are for the wealthy.”

Since this tax is a flat one, it is regressive, meaning it applies to all people the same regardless of income levels. And such a tax affects lower income people more than the rich.

Representatives of other arts organization, such as Step Afrika! director Brian Williams, said they already charge patrons less than what the tickets are worth, and they make up the difference by securing sponsorships.

FILED UNDER: Culture, Government, D.C. Budget, Helen Hayes Awards, Step Afrika!
April 29, 2011 | 12:00 PM | By

Graham: Outsourcing Youth Rehab is Expensive and Cuts Family Ties

Flickr: dbking

Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham

Two D.C.teens recently escaped from centers in Maryland and South Carolina aimed at rehabilitating them.

D.C. spends approximately $67,000 a day to house 225 wards in so-called residential treatment centers, or RTCs, across several states, according to a recent Examiner article. Councilman Jim Graham, chairman of the city committee that oversees the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, slammed the RTC system recently, saying it’s not cost-effective or productive.

“Sending kids to Utah and Arizona and Tennessee and South Carolina raises our costs and cuts those ties. It is totally unacceptable, for example, that we do not have a juvenile substance abuse treatment program right here in DC. I hope to be able to change that shortly,” he said in an email.

But supporters of the current system say the District doesn’t have enough centers. The teens sent out-of-state “are not kids who have shoplifted, these are hard-core bad guys,” Kris Bauman, leader of D.C.’s police union told the Examiner recently.

Critics question how troubled the youth are, since that is hard to measure. Some say what’s needed is a rehabilitation program that’s closer to home, or perhaps at home.

In some cases, RTCs have been used for wards who did not have a serious emotional disturbance or mental illness and who were not a threat to themselves or the community, according to the Washington City Paper.

What’s more, the city’s youth rehabilitation services department may have exceeded its budget by $994,000 in 2009 in part because it used RTCs for teens who may not have needed it.

But it’s easier to send teens away than deal with guiding them to improve their lives, said Victoria Otchere, Program Director at Sasha Bruce Youthwork, a local nonprofit that designs intervention strategies to treat teens at home.

Otchere echoes Graham’s concerns about preserving family ties because she believes relatives can be an important part of the rehabilitation process. She has worked with DYRS wards who benefited from remaining in the community and receiving the support of their families.

FILED UNDER: Government, Children, DYRS