I am becoming convinced that this administration is just mean-spirited:

From the Washington Post:

Last month’s budget-cutting bill would save $50 billion over five years by imposing new fees on Medicaid recipients, trimming the food stamp rolls, squeezing student lenders and cutting federal child support enforcement.

Let me get this straight…

We don’t want the kid to get child support. If he manages to get it, we are going to make sure that he has a diffuclt time getting fed. If he manages to escape this fate and gets to college, we will try to bankrupt him. And if he lives through all of this, we are going to try to kill him in his golden years, and short of killing him we will make it as painful and expensive as possible.

Judy Rosen gives the lumber to David Brooks over his recent op-ed on French “Gangsta Rap”.

From Karen Russel at huffingtonpost.com - The GOP’s African-American Talking Points

From Arrian Huffington herself:

“Delay, Frist, Abramoff, Safavian… Wasn’t this the crowd that was going to “restore honor and integrity” to Washington? If this is what integrity looks like, let’s bring back Oval Office blow jobs.”

According to Bill Bennet criticism of his comments below are “ridiculous, stupid, totally without merit.”

“I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down,” Mr. Bennettsaid in the broadcast. “That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.”

As I crossed 6th Avenue at Houston the other day, I came across the most curious advertisement:

Coming Soon. Steve Returns. Spring 2005.

I was puzzled for a moment, assuming that Steve was a television character or a reality show contestant that I was unaware of. The small logo in the corner of the advertisement alerted me to the identity of this mysterious Steve. He was, of course, Steve Madden of trendy shoe fame. And from whence does he return you might ask? Prison. Also known affectionately as The Joint, The Bing or The Clink.

I have since seen other ads:

A new meaning for the word spring time. Steve returns. Spring 2005.

Or the one on the company’s website:

There’s one pair of shoes that’s been impossible to fill. Steve Returns. Spring 2005.

My first reaction was outrage. It sure would be nice, I thought, if all felons that served their time were greeted with such open arms. I can see it now, huge banners hanging from the doors of the local grocery store celebrating the return of Tito, a stock boy before he was sent upstate for the dime bag of marijuana he had in his glove box. The sign proclaiming:

Now back in stock. Tito Returns. Spring 2005.

But there are no such open arms reaching out to welcome most convicted felons; no support networks to aid them in their attempts to integrate back into society. In fact, it seems that we make it as difficult as possible. Convicted felons are routinely denied job opportunities that they are qualifed to perform and desperately need to create a strong foothold in the world outside of prison. Even if we throw the notion that prison can rehabilitate to the wind, employers fail to base their decisions on some objective criteria that evaluates the crime in relation to the duties of the job. We just don’t like criminals.

Many states go further and actively deny the franchise to felons - a signal that the state believes that, no matter whether prison is justified on a punishment theory or a rehabilitative one, that prison is insufficient. If prison is punishment, we have not punished you enough. If prison is rehabilitative, we don’t think it worked.

But perhaps my outrage wasn’t the appropriate response. Viewed a different way, this is an opportunity of unprecedented proportions. For the first time, companies are celebrating the return of their convicted, sentenced, imprisoned and freed employees. I hope that you, Mr. Madden, and you too Ms. Stewart, realize that your warm welcomes could have been anything but. And I hope that you understand that most similarly situated folks don’t have such an easy landing.

I’d like to ask you both to consider this as you return to your jobs and your old lives. Each of you should do whatever is in your power to focus your organizations on providing opportunities to ex-felons. More importantly, you should put your names and your sizable resources to immediate work in advocating for the rights, interests and needs of your newly unincarcerated brotheren and sisteren.

If you both do that, I will certainly celebrate your homecomings.

There has been much opining on the new Video for Eminem’s Mosh. I was blown away when I first watched the video. I think it was more shock than anything else. I was overwhelmed by the call to action, being spit by an entertainer who is best known for his nihilistic view of the world.

No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our soil / No more psychological warfare to trick us to think that we ain’t loyal / If we don’t serve our own country we’re patronizing a hero / Look in his eyes, it’s all lies, the stars and stripes / They’ve been swiped, washed out and wiped, / And Replaced with his own face, mosh now or die /If I get sniped tonight you’ll know why, because I told you to fight

Furthermore, I assumed that even Eminem wouldn’t just come out and say “Fuck Bush” as he does in this song.

I have a few issues with the video to be sure. And Tim Boucher has an interesting critique of the video. I have a few issues with the video to be sure. I think Eminem’s chorus is eerily messianic:

Come along, follow me as I lead through the darkness / As I provide just enough spark, that we need to proceed / Carry on, give me hope, give me strength,
Come with me, and I won’t steer you wrong / Put your faith and your trust as I guide us through the fog / Till the light, at the end, of the tunnel, we gonna fight, / We gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march through the swamp / We gonna mosh through the marsh, take us right through the doors

Additionally, Eminem certainly simplifies the issues facing voters (the animation shows a soldier being reassigned to Iraq after serving out his tour of duty and a women reading an eviction notice while Bush is on t.v. touting his tax cuts) but, I think the shorthand is effective, and accurate.

In all, I am thrilled that Mr. Mathers decided to make this video. I do believe that in this day and age when many young folk are completely detached from politics, a video like this may spur thousands to action. I sure hope so.

If you head over to Jack Bog’s Blog, he has pledged to donate a dollar, to charities that fight hunger in Oregon, for each unique visitor to his site between 12:01 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. (PST) today.

Thanks to Adam.

I came across the The SEED School a year ago. I’d love to work for these guys. They started the first and only urban boarding school. It is located in S.E. DC and from what I understand, admission is based on lottery and not test scores. I love the fact that it is located in the community. I hated seeing what prep for prep did to some of my classmates in college. I think this approach is spot on. I know too many kids that grew up in the Marcy Projects but went to Andover or Choate and then a potted ivy. They never quite got comfortable. I always felt as if they were rootless. Absolutely nothing wrong with a kid from the PJs going to Exeter. I just hate the modern myth that to “save” our promising minorities requires extracting them from their communities and delivering them to safety, like the Delta Force rescuing a P.O.W.

I look forward to learning more about SEED.