- From one disaster-battered, downtrodden place to another -
albeit due to wholly different causes. Haitians are among the many people
illegally crossing into the United States via the Mexican border, trying to
escape an impoverished homeland beaten down by one natural disaster after
another with a healthy dose of incompetent government mixed in. But when they’re
caught, what do you do with them? Put
them on a boat back to their island? Return to sender, i.e. Mexico? Or option
three, funneling them into a privately run prison in a Rust Belt, industrially decaying
city like Youngstown, Ohio? That third option is looking the most likely under
a federal plan to accommodate Haitian border crashers. The Department of
Homeland Security is negotiating with the operators of the Northeast Ohio
Correctional Center to lease space to house an expected glut of Haitian illegal
immigrant. Word on the street is that officials with Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), a division of DHS, expect thousands from the impoverished
island nation to cross the border ‘twixt the United States and Mexico. Like so
many prisons in the U.S. correction system, the NOCC is run by a private
company, in this case CoreCivic. Believe it or not, the prospect of having hundreds
of Haitians foisted on their area by the federal government has been met
opposition in the Buckeye State. “Incarcerating thousands of immigrants in a
private prison before deporting them is unjust and allowing a corporation to
profit from it is a travesty,” said Mike Brickner, senior policy director of
the ACLU of Ohio, said in a statement. And for once, the ACLU has a point and
isn’t just fighting for the sake of fighting. But truthfully, incarcerating
people for a profit is fast becoming the American way and there seems to be
little standing in the way of this brand new take on the American dream…….
- Only in Division I college athletics can a person choosing
to change schools because it’s what they want to do and is totally legal under
the current NCAA rules be described as a big problem. Coaches and athletic
directors dislike the fact that more than 700 players on Division I rosters
swapped schools last season, many taking advantage of fifth-year transfer rules
that allow them to play immediately, but their complaints ring a bit hollow.
Sure, that number could swell to more than 800 by the time this season begins
next week, but the fact remains that any of those coaches and administrators
could jump ship tomorrow for a better opportunity at another school and none of
them would have a beef with that fact. Kansas men’s coach Bill Self is one of
the haters who are hiding behind bogus concerns about the long-term effect on
the health and popularity of the sport, claiming that players who earn their
undergraduate degree but still have one of their four years of eligibility left
and transfer to another school where they can play immediately are a bad thing.
"I do think it's a big-time problem in college basketball. It's a problem
in college athletics," said Self, who ironically has three transfers from
four-year schools on his current roster. "But I also think it's a societal
problem because how many kids now, if you don't play on your high school team,
what's the first thing you do? You switch schools. It happens in football and
other sports, too. "I mean, we'd like for it to be tightened up, where
there's less transfers and hopefully that will be the case.” Right, and the
next time one of your coaching brethren skip town for a bigger payday at a
better program, leaving players in the lurch, you’ll rip that vagabond coach,
right……….
- He may be elderly, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to
duck a fight. Lebanon's newly elected president is probably closer to shuffling
off this mortal coil of ours than he is to finishing the term in office to
which he’s been elected, but that’s not stopping 83-year-old Michel Aoun from
throwing down the gauntlet against corruption and promising nation-building in
the deeply divided country. Aoun, who has been a central figure in Lebanese
politics for decades, was elected by parliament as president last week. In his
first public address since being elected, he spoke before thousands of
supporters who gathered at the presidential palace in Baabda in southeastern
Beirut. "A strong nation needs a strong government to administer it,"
he said. "Corruption will be uprooted.” It was an extremely vague,
pandering speech that drew cheers from his supporters waving red, white and
green Lebanese flags, possibly happy simply to have a president after going 29
months without one. Then again, as any American considering the possibility of
a Donald Trump presidency knows, sometimes the notion of no president at all is
better than having a wholly unqualified one in office. There are Lebanese who
believe their senior citizen leader will
breathe new life into state institutions that have been paralyzed for
nearly three years, but one has to wonder what has atrophied and what has
simply wasted away in a span of 29 months without an actual leader. Stamping
out corruption is hard when the nation’s highest elected office is vacant, so a
backlog of nearly three years of leadership work now falls on a man who is
firmly in the age bracket for early bird specials, afternoon naps and being in
bed before 8 p.m. daily………
- Dangle a powerful enough incentive in front of virtually
any dysfunctional rock band and you can get them to put aside their “creative
differences” and reunite for a show and the accompanying payday. Legendary
British rockers The Kinks, who split up in 1996 due largely to tensions between
brothers Ray and Dave Davies, just might reform in time to headline Glastonbury
2017. It’s simply astonishing that a band that hasn’t been together in two
decades could be persuaded to set aside its issues and headline one of the
biggest music festivals in the world - making a nice chunk of change in the
process and yet, here’s Ray Davies, suggesting that he and his bandmates may do
just that. “I’m still trying to live that down. I joined him on stage briefly
but it would be overly romantic to think it was because of the show or to start
talking about a reunion,” Ray Davies said after briefly joining his brother on
stage during a gig at Islington Assembly Hall earlier this year. “David and I
will definitely work together again - and we want to play live. Maybe The Kinks
could play Glastonbury.” During their run of 30-plus years together, The Kinks
sold millions of albums and were one of the British bands that pushed the punk
genre forward, but now the brothers Davies are hovering around 70 years old and
they’re suggesting festival gigs that Glastonbury organizers have yet to
respond to and presumably would not immediately approve when much bigger, more
current and more relevant acts would love that headlining set. But hey, why not
go on dreaming that your improbable cash grab of a dream is possible and hope
that reunion magic can indeed happen, rather than continuing in a state of
confusion……..
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