If this isn’t the best display of how things work here in DC…
$219 “Professionalism Course” even after completing law school, an ethics course, the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam, a character & fitness exam, the Bar Exam, another professionalism course, a character interview, another character & fitness exam, and being a practicing attorney for seven months?
Actually being civil to other attorneys once you’re a full-fledged member of the profession?
Priorities!
The City of Detroit – which has been having a dickens of a time keeping its children and other citizens alive lately – is finally getting some much-needed help from the federal government. No, it’s not a little extra cash for cops or teachers. It’s a brand new program to feed all students “healthy school meals” (oxymoron?), even the ones that can ostensibly afford such things. Why? To “reduce the stigma” of receiving a free lunch. I don’t kid:
Michigan, Illinois and Kentucky were selected to participate through the U.S. Department of Agriculture Community Eligibility Option Program. All of Detroit Public Schools' estimated 65,800 students will receive the free food starting this fall.
An additional 600,000 students out of the state's 1.57 million students qualify for the free meals.
To be eligible for the program, a school or district must have at least 40 percent of its students receiving the free meals. School systems could opt in districtwide if they qualify or bring in individual buildings.
One of the goals is to eliminate the shame some students may feel in receiving free food, said Aaron Lavallee, U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman.
"We've worked very hard to reduce the stigma," Lavallee said. "We're seeing a lot of working-class families who've had to turn to free school meals to feed their children. A lot of these kids are getting the bulk of their calories at school, so these programs are very important."
Yes, yes, I know I’m the asshole who complains about feeding kids. I get that. I’m used to it. I’ve been called worse. And yes, the feds (don’t) have so much money that they’ve spent tons more on other fun things for Michigan that…well…never seem to help out actual poor people (like battery plants and choo choo trains and washers and dryers for dead people).
But seriously, $4.5 billion dollars to “reduce the stigma”? And we’re reassured that “the stigma is real” by Mark Schrupp, DPS; chief operating office because “more than 78 percent of students qualify for free food.” Which, what? Wouldn’t this stigmatize the kids who can actually afford their own lunches? And doesn’t this just stigmatize the whole damn city? We’re also told that kids skip meals to avoid this stigma, and not, you know, because they’re freaking school cafeteria meals. (The Free Press gets the win with the photo they selected to accompany their article). Apparently nobody at the USDA ever went to elementary school.
It’s not even the money - $4.5 bil is a drop in the bucket. It’s the principle. And I hate the whole “don’t spend money on this! spend it on that!” game because we can play that one forever. But this is borderline satirical. That our cash-strapped federal government is going to send millions to the poorest city in a broke state – one that just saw 25 people shot in a weekend and graduates about 60% of its students – to combat stigmas.
Sad photo I took at DTW last weekend:
I’m still not quite sure how to feel about the Borders bankruptcy. On one hand, it was a big corporation that threatened smaller, independent retailers, so I think that means I was supposed to hate Borders. But then it’s a Michigan-based company, so I think that means I was supposed to like it. And apparently, it couldn’t attract enough customers to survive on its own in the marketplace, so I’m not sure why some of our elected leaders didn’t take our money and give it to Borders. And people seem to be reacting to the Borders bankruptcy the way my dog acts when I put away one of his toys: completely uninterested until I take it away from him, then acting like it was the most important thing in the world. I just have no idea what I’m supposed to think here. I need a chart or something.
Alas, when in doubt, I have my fallback rule: figure out Mitch Albom’s position, and get as far away from it as humanly possible. Example:
The problem is people don't love books the way they once did, nor do they read them the same way. Cheaper electronic versions undermine the need for shelf-space. Younger audiences who haven't grown up with rainy afternoons spent inside book pages, don't snap up the latest great read -- unless there's a certain vampire or wizard attached. The backlists of mid-level authors are not lucrative for the balance sheet. And the pressure for profits to keep the stock price high runs diametrically opposite to the slow, meandering, long-term customer approach that used to define bookstores.
I wish I could write paragraphs like that. First of all, it’s Albom’s longest paragraph ever. But beyond that, the first sentence is almost definitely false; the second sentence seems like a good thing; the third sentence is both misleading – because of the internet, “younger audiences” have access to an astronomical amount of information, far more than their ancestors – and insulting; sentence four is also almost definitely false, or at least irrelevant; and sentence five is absolutely true since things like “profit motive” and the stock market did not exist in 1970. Right?
Don’t worry though. Have a Little Faith was still available in the airport bookstore.
