Successful Basketball Coach Convicted Of Molesting Player

Most coaches have the best intentions of their players at heart. There are some coaches that have ulterior motives. All coaches have to be viewed with a certain amount of vigilance by parents.

Some coaches have too much access to kids at times. They may offer to drive a child home from practice which is convenient for busy parents. Even though the coach may drop off many players after practice, the last player being dropped off could give a coach with molesting tendencies private time with a child.

Veteran Compton high school coach (20 years at Dominguez High School and 5 state championships) Russell Otis has been sentenced to 60 days in county jail, placed on three years' probation and ordered to undergo a year of sex offender counseling.

Mr. Otis, who is 47 years old, was convicted last year of a misdemeanor charge of child molestation for subjecting a former player to a barrage of text messages that the player testified was sexual in nature.

Even a former player for Russell Otis at Dominguez High testified about his experiences many years earlier with the coach. -Read former player takes the stand.

Fortunately for young basketball players in Compton, CA, Mr. Otis also will have to register as a sex offender. This will bar him from teaching or coaching again. He plans to appeal the decision according to his attorney.

The Homicide Report & President Obama

The Los Angeles Times has a section on their website that makes it difficult for anyone to forget all of the gun related murders typically involving African Americans and Latinos.

Everyone knows that illegal guns is a problem in America. These guns are behind too many of the murders in inner cities. Some of the murders included on The Homicide Report have actually taken place in broad daylight.

It is almost like the Wild Wild West in some communities. Interestingly, we do not hear of these criminals using grenades or other explosive devices in the way they are used by terrorists in other countries.

There is a logical explanation. The U.S. government must have the ability to monitor almost all bomb making inventory and devices. Being able to track the materials, inventory, and the players involved keeps these devices out of the hands of criminals and terrorists.

When a group of people give their overwhelming support to a President, they should receive something in return. One place to start would be to ask the President to place a high priority on significantly reducing illegal gun related crime.

There would be strong resistance from many in this country that believe the U.S. Constitution gives them gun rights. No one that uses guns for collection, hunting, security or any other legal reasons should have to give up their guns. In addition, Americans should not have have limits placed on their ability to buy as many guns as they desire as long as they are purchased legally.

President Obama and the U.S. government could advocate for a monitoring and tracking system for handguns similar to the one being used to make sure that bomb making components do not end up in the wrong hands. This would be sensible and it would make a big difference in the lives of too many Americans to count.

Three teens arrested in 'sexting' case

Police say 3 teens were arrested after they sent a naked photo of a 14-year-old girl in a text message. This is a situation that took place in Thurston County which is located in the state of Washington.

When juveniles are engaged in certain types of sexual crimes, they could possibly have to register as sex offenders. This would be for the most serious sanctions if they are found guilty.

The mother of the 14-year-old girl whose naked picture was shared said that out of a lack of self esteem and confusion, she sent her then-boyfriend a naked picture of herself.

The mother also believes that her daughter was looking for someone to care about her and love her.

One week after she broke up with her boyfriend, police say a group of female students convinced the ex-boyfriend into texting them the photo. This is when the text with the photo went viral.

In one day, students were forwarding the text, and it had been received by students at four middle schools.

Children have to be educated on the dangers of becoming involved in criminal activity which appears to be fun but could actually ruin their lives. Furthermore, children need parents to speak with them about the risks that can come from sharing personal and private things with best friends, boyfriends, and girlfriends which could be used against them if the relationship ended.

9 Year Old Commits Suicide

Montana Lance, a 9 nine old fourth grader went to see the school nurse. He then went into the restroom, locked the door and hung himself. This is a real tragedy.

For many people, they cannot imagine kids this young even contemplating suicide. Between the years 1999 through 2006, there have been 33 suicides by kids with the age range of 5 to 9 years old reported CNN.com.

It is very important to pay attention to mood swings of children. It is also relevant to take note if your child is isolating himself much more than usual.

It does not matter whether the kids committed suicide are black or white. The suicide for both both races of children are startling and growing.

Donna Barnes, co-founder of the National Organization for People of Color Against Suicide stated that many Black people consider themselves strong people that can deal with their problems, and do not have time for depression.

Statistics help feed the fiction that black teens do not kill themselves. Whites who are 15 to 19 years old are twice as likely to kill themselves as their black counterparts. These statistics do not tell the complete story.

From 1980 to 1995, the suicide rate among black boys age 15 to 19 jumped 128 percent while it only increased by just 19 percent for white boys in the same age range, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although it has declined some since then, suicide is the third leading cause of death among young black males.

This is an issue that must taken seriously and it should not be ignored.

Brother Posted On Billboards With Mistress

Gentlemen have to be very careful today. Many mistresses do not go riding into the sunset quietly these days.

This is the sort of thing that you'd never expect to happen in real life: the long-term mistress of a married Oracle executive Charles Phillips allegedly spent in the neighborhood of $250,000 in billboards in New York, Atlanta, and San Francisco to out their affair when YaVaughnie Wilkins heard that he was patching things up with his wife it has been reported.

This guy was with the woman for eight years and this is going to be the final chapter for the two of them. She must have been pissed off in the end. She must have felt played even though he claimed in a statement that they had wished each other well when the relationship ended.

Vindictiveness is like a drug that is hard to control. She spent a lot of money to out this brother. Love and emotions when raw mixed with the desire to strike back can be a very dangerous combination.

Seagram's Continues Jobs Program for African American Men

Recently featured in Jet magazine, the Seagram’s Pursuit of Excellence Institute is a rigorous, four-week training session funded by Seagram’s and administered by the Atlanta Workforce Development Agency, Chicago Urban League, the Corporation to Develop Communities of Tampa and the Columbia Urban League.

To address rising unemployment among African American men, which is at a record 34.5%, Seagram’s has announced plans to continue its successful and unprecedented job training and mentoring program, the Pursuit of Excellence Institute in four of the hardest hit cities in the nation: Atlanta, Chicago, Tampa and Columbia South Carolina.

If you are located in one of these cities and you are looking for work or you are exploring a career change, go to the website and read the Press Release.

Jet Magazine has reported that this is the third year of the program. This opportunity for Black men is typically for those in the age range of 25 to 32 years old.

To date, 60 men have completed the program. This year, the number is expected to jump to 100. The job placement rate upon completion of the program is nearly 95 percent, Jet Magazine reported.

The Government Is Hiring Census Workers

The government will hire about 1.2 million temporary workers in the first half of the year to administer the once every 10 years population count.

The stimulus bill President Barack Obama signed last February and additional funding by Congress provided enough money to hire 1.4 million Americans in total for the census, almost three times as many as in 2000 when the census was last taken. About 160,000 were already employed last year to do preliminary work.

The Census Bureau anticipates hiring about 181,000 workers from January through March and about 971,000 in the following three months.

Although the pay can vary, many of the jobs offered are for those going door-to-door to collect data from households that do not fill out and return their short list of ten questions. Households that do not return the forms before April 1 will be getting a visit from Census workers after that time.

For more information about 2010 Census Jobs, visit the government website. You can even take a practice test at the website.

The 2010 Census will help communities receive more than $400 billion in federal government money each year for things like:
•Hospitals
•Job training centers
•Schools
•Senior centers
•Bridges, tunnels and other-public works projects
•Emergency services

The data collected by the census also helps determine the number of seats your state has in the United States Congress. The U.S. Congress is where all politicians from your area are suppose to represent you and everyone else in your community.

The Sumpreme Court And Justices Voting Together

It is quite amazing that the 9 members of the U.S. Supreme court typically fall into one of two camps. These two camps tend to decide cases with a 5 to 4 split.

Judged are suppose to review the facts before them before deciding every case. A casual observer of the Supreme Court may conclude that the members are making some judicial decisions based on political affiliation instead of the facts.

Supreme Court decisions are too often based on the same block of Justices voting together. Chief Justice John Roberts is typically joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Kennedy, and Samuel Alito. Included in the other camp of Justices are Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer.

It does not help that many Americans see these 9 Justices as either being in the conservative camp or the liberal camp. Federal judges who are appointed for life are suppose to be apolitical.

There is nothing wrong with a 5 to 4 ruling; however, it is very interesting when the same groups of Justices vote together. The most famous 5 to 4 decision for many Americans today is Bush versus Gore.

Government Posting Wealth Of Data To Internet

The Obama administration on Friday is posting to the Internet a wealth of government data from all Cabinet-level departments on a wide range of topics and categories.

The mountain of newly available information comes a year and a day after President Barack Obama promised on his first full day on the job an open, transparent government.

Under a Dec. 8 White House directive, each department must post online at least three collections of "high-value" government data that never have been previously disclosed.

All the new data collections will be added to the government's Web site, data.gov.

Required to release the three new data sets are the departments of State, Treasury, Defense, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, Education, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency, the offices of the U.S. Trade Representative and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and the Council of Economic Advisers.

It is important that Brothers know what information is available and how to find it in case they ever need it.

Surburban Poverty Now Greater Than Poverty In Inner Cities

Between 2000 and 2008, the number of poor people living in America rose by 15.4 percent -- nearly twice the growth rate in the overall population in the same period.

The poverty rate in American suburbs increased 25 percent during that period -- and is growing significantly faster than the national average and urban rate. Due in large part to suburban population growth and the housing slump, the suburbs now contain the nation's biggest and fastest-growing poor population.

The Brookings Institution published a report showing that from Las Vegas to Boise to Houston, suburban poverty has been growing steadily.

"The enduring social and fiscal challenges for cities that stem from high poverty are increasingly shared by their suburbs," the report concludes. It's a problem some may assume is confined to the ragged fringes of so-called "inner ring" suburbs that directly border cities, places where the housing stock is older and from which many wealthier residents long ago departed. But this isn't the case. "Overall...first suburbs did not bear the brunt of increasing suburban poverty in the early 2000s," notes the Brookings report, which found that economic distress has spread to "second-tier suburbs and 'exurbs'" as well.

The result is a historic milestone that has gone strangely ignored: For the first time ever, more poor Americans live in the suburbs than in all our cities combined. - Read Report

President Obama Has Finally Put On The Gloves

President Obama is starting his second year in office. He gave himself a solid B plus grade for his first year in office back in December. This is how he explained it during an interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Obama: Good solid B-plus. I think that we have inherited the biggest set of challenges of any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. We stabilized the economy, prevented the possibilities of a great depression, or a significant financial meltdown. The economy is growing again, we are on our way out of Iraq, I think we've got the best possible plan for Afghanistan, we have reset our image around the world, we have achieved an international consensus around the need for Iran and North Korea to disable their nuclear weapons, and I think that we're gonna pass the most significant piece of social legislation since social security and that's health insurance for every American.

There are others who wondered aloud if he was governing in a different way than he said he would as a candidate. Many of the folks thinking this way may not have been so kind if they had to grade him.

After all, unemployment is still at 10 percent or higher. We are still in Iraq and things are not looking great in Afghanistan at the moment. Millions of Americans are still experiencing foreclosure on their homes. Many Americans are also upset that the government bailed out the banks using hundreds of billions of dollars and now some of these banks plan to pay their top employees billions in bonuses.

Some Americans have been thinking lately that maybe Obama is aligned with Wall Street instead of Main Street. President Obama campaigned as a Main Street kind of politician so thinking of him any other way simply does not sit well for some Americans.

After Democrats have lost the New Jersey Governors race back in November and the Massachusetts Senate race earlier in the week, it appears as though an Obama we have not really seen up to this point as a President is emerging.

Today, he announced that he will push for New Banking Regulations that will limit the risky but highly profitable business activities of those institutions that are considered too big to fail. He better be prepared for a fight against Wall Street because they will not accept these new regulations lying down. - Read Story

Tylenol Recall 2010

Tylenol recall 2010!
Here we are, day 15 of 2010. Johnson & Johnson division McNeil-PPC has issued recalls on the following:

•junior strength Motrin
•children’s Tylenol grape meltaway tablets
•extra strength Tylenol
•extra strength Tylenol rapid release gelcap
•extra strength Tylenol PM geltab
•Motrin caplets
•extra strength Rolaids fresh mint tablets
•St. Joseph Aspirin chewable orange tablets

FDA response to Tylenol recall of 2010
Besides a warning letter, the FDA has released public statements, saying:

“The company should have acted faster. All companies have a responsibility to ensure high quality, safety and effectiveness of their products and protect consumers.”

The FDA says it will “aggressively investigate and solve the problem.” The warning letter says McNeil has 15 days to report on its efforts to address the current problem and prevent it from reoccurring. - Read Story

Walmart & Claires Pulling Children's Jewerly Feared Tainted

Federal and state watchdogs opened a new front in the campaign to keep poisons out of Chinese imports, launching inquiries into high levels of cadmium in children's jewelry while Walmart pulled many suspect items from its store shelves.

The jewelry and accessories store Claire's, with nearly 3,000 locations in North America and Europe, joined Walmart Stores Inc. in saying it would stop selling any item cited in an Associated Press investigation of the presence of cadmium in cheap bracelets and charms.

A day after The Associated Press documented the contamination in an investigative report, the top U.S. consumer safety regulator warned Asian manufacturers not to substitute other toxins for lead in children's charm bracelets and pendants.

Regulators and lawmakers reacted swiftly to the AP report, which found that some Chinese manufacturers have been using cadmium, sometimes at extraordinarily high levels. Congress clamped down on lead in those products in 2008, but cadmium is even more harmful.

Cadmium is attractive to Chinese manufacturers because it is cheap and easy to work with. But, like lead, it can hinder brain development in the very young, recent research shows.

Federal Judge Cites Discrimination By New York Fire Department

John Coombs, the president of the Vulcan Society, won a racial bias suit against the New York City Fire Department. The Vulcan Society, Inc. is a national organization which aims to recruit and support African-American firefighters.

A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that New York City intentionally discriminated against black applicants to the Fire Department by continuing to use an exam that it had been told put them at a disadvantage.

“From 1999 to 2007, the New York City Fire Department used written examinations with discriminatory effects and little relationship to the job of a firefighter… [that] unfairly excluded hundreds of qualified people of color from the opportunity to serve as New York City firefighters,” said Judge Garaufis in the Memorandum and Order. “Today, the court holds that New York City’s reliance on these examinations constitutes employment discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

Is this surprising to anyone? The federal, states, and local governments in this country are a major employer of the American people. At the same time, many of these various government branches employ a much lower percentage of African American and Latino employees than the the percentage of residents living in their city or state.

For example, black and Latino firefighters comprised only 3 percent and 7 percentof the New york Fire Department as of 2007, respectively. Meanwhile, New York City's black and Latino population was more than 50 percent during the same year.

This matters because it is all about jobs in America. Jobs is the true civil rights issue. This is the perfect example of the kind of job in America that does not require much education and allows a person to enjoy the American Dream - house with backyard and white picket fence, good health insurance and retirement benefits, a good salary to pay for a family's monthly lifestyle, money to assist a child with paying for college, vacations to new places annually, etc.

The court found that the city closed the door on over a thousand qualified candidates of color,” said CCR attorney Darius Charney". Imagine a thousand more black and Latino men possibly married with good career jobs and supporting their families and by extension the communities in which they live. Imagine hundreds of guys simply leading productive lives in their community and adding value to America as citizens in particular.

Unfortunately, this kind of employment discrimination is more common than Americans want to believe even though it is illegal in this country. In 2005, it was reported that Baltimore hired its first all-white class of firefighter recruits in 50years. 100 percent of the recruits were white in a city where whites were only about 30 percent of the population and blacks made up more than 60 percent during 2005. In Montgomery County Maryland, the class of white recruits was 89 percentwhile their population in the county is only 60 percent.

One day, someone with deep pockets and a lot of power (President Obama possibly) will fund a study to determine the number of Latinos and African Americans that are actually employed in public local, state, and federal government jobs compared to their overall numbers in a particular city and state.

Will Millions of Lost Jobs Return?

The current recession has placed millions of Americans on unemployment. Unfortunately, men of color are almost always one the first groups let go when there are massive job losses in the country. Furthermore, this group always has had a much higher unemployment rate than other groups in the country.

Many of the jobs being lost today may actually never return. Some are calling this recession a "Mancession" because most of the job losses today are affecting men.

With the millions of jobs lost in the last 2 years, it is difficult to understand a situation that would allow many companies and industries to reach the same level of employment as in the past. Another issue is that American global economic power is shifting to places like China which is another reason for many lost jobs. In places like China, the salary paid to a factory worker (calculated as less than $1 per hour back in 2002) is much lower than the salary paid to an American factory worker.

Jobs created by the booms in the housing and credit markets, for example, have likely been permanently erased by the subsequent bust. Manufacturing jobs in the auto industry have lead the manufacturing sector in the country in job losses.

The finance industry which usually offers many high paying jobs has lost more than 500,000 jobs during this recession and will be under more pressure to layoff more employees. After all, more than a hundred banking companies have closed their doors since the recession started.

This past November, there were 36% fewer people working in record shops than two years earlier, according to the U.S. Labor Department. There were 23% fewer people working at directory and mailing list publishers, and 46% fewer at photofinishing establishments. Those are jobs that, with the advent of mp3 recordings, Google and digital photography, were likely disappearing anyway.

The recession also provided companies with an opportunity to cut jobs no longer as critical as they once were. That may be particularly true of the secretaries and mail room clerks since advances in information technology have made these jobs less necessary.

The ranks of people doing office and administrative work have fallen more than 10% since the recession began. Many of these jobs are being affected by the new information age, and they are being automated.

Vanguard Settles Another Racial Discrimination Case

In the first week of the New Year (January, 2010), Vanguard Group announced it will pay $300,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accusing the Malvern, Pa., mutual fund company of racial bias in its hiring practices.

The EEOC alleged in a federal complaint filed in September that Vanguard decided not to hire Barbara Alexander as a financial planning manager because she was black even after she was told during the hiring process, including at roughly 13 interviews, that she was qualified for the job. Alexander has worked in the industry for 14 years.

Vanguard instead offered the job to two less qualified white men, and one accepted, according to the EEOC.

Approximately one year ago, Vanguard settled another racial discrimination lawsuit for $500,000 with the EEOC. This was a lawsuit that charged that the company retaliated against Raymond Ross, of Maple Glen, Pa. by subjecting him to a series of adverse employment actions culminating in his termination. Read Story

Tiger Woods Photographed As Dark and Violent

Why must Brothers be portrayed as resembling apes or someone dark and possibly violent? Vanity Fair will follow up Vogue's highly criticized portrayal of Lebron James with a dark, semi-thugged out Tiger Woods. Just imagine Tiger with the tattoos and you can immediately see him in a very different image than the one Tiger and Nike have crafted over the years. By the way, The Lebron and Tiger photographs were taken by the same photographer - Annie Leibovitz.

Many people say that the criticism has been overblown with Lebron, and they will probably say the same thing to the Tiger Woods photo critics as well. People do not realize that Lebron was the first black man to appear on a Vogue cover in their 116 history. The question one raises is why does the first or historically rare opportunity have to be portrayed in a way that by American standards are negative.

If these athletes were aware of the American history and the negative connotations with such apelike, violent, and predator portrayals, one would hope that the athletes would not agree to these images of Brothers.

What To Do If Stopped By The Police

For the most part, men of color do not know how to respond when stopped by the police while they are going about their daily life legally. In too many cases, a police officer will stop an innocent person for some reason or another and the person ends up arrested.

Many times, a person is arrested because the officer did not like the fact that the person they stopped is questioning the approach and appropriateness of the racial profiling. Expressing one's frustration when a police officer pulls you other and voicing displeasure is both okay and legal. However, an officer that is controlling and does not like the way you question their authority can arrest you on a number of charges. The main one seems to be the very vague disorderly conduct charges.

It would be great to see African American and Latino politicians address this issue with organizations like NAPO (National Association of Police Organizations) or IUPA (Internatonal Union Of Police Associatons)in order to come up with standards on the best ways for men of color to respond to profiling stops when they have not committed any crime.

In the meantime, the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) has developed a printable set of guidelines when racial profiling takes place. The information may not be perfect, but it gives one an idea of how to handle these situations when they are stopped by the police. Read Guidelines

The guidelines are saved as a PDF file and one would need a PDF reader which is available for free if it is not already installed on the computer being used. Here is a link to a free and popular PDF reader called Acrobat Reader - Download File

Is NY Post Dead Chimp Obama In Disguise?

The N.Y. Post had a cartoon in it's February '09 paper showing the police shooting a primate. The Post says that "They were just making fun of a story of an ape that was shot in cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy".

The ape in the cartoon was related to the author of the Stimulus bill in Washington, DC, but the ape in Connecticut that the cartoon is based on has no relationship to politics in Washington. The author of the stimulus bill is Washington, DC is seen by many Americans as President Obama.

This is why there was an outcry from many places in the country when many people saw the cartoon.

Zero Net Jobs Created in 1st Decade

The world has moved into the second decade of the 21st century. When it comes to jobs growth in the United States, there were zero jobs created from Jan. 1, 2000 through Dec. 31, 2009. This means that more jobs were lost than created during this period. Some people are calling the first decade of the new Millennium, "The Lost Decade".

"This was the first business cycle where a working-age household ended up worse at the end of it than the beginning, and this in spite of substantial growth in productivity, which should have been able to improve everyone's well-being," said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. Read Story