Showing posts with label Men. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Men. Show all posts
Friday, September 18, 2026
Saturday, August 01, 2026
Thousands of Moroccan migrants leave after storming Spanish enclave
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Spain Escorts Thousands of Migrants Back to Morocco After Deadly Ceuta Border Crisis | AC1G
Friday, July 31, 2026
Over 1,500 Migrants SWARM Into Spain During Chaotic Mass Border Crossing
New York Post
Jul 30, 2026
Thousands of migrants streamed into the tiny Spanish territory of Ceuta from Morocco on Thursday, prompting local officials to call on Spain to declare a national emergency and send the army to restore the frontier.
Spain’s interior ministry said it would guarantee the safety of citizens and the integrity of the nation’s border, but that the government could not declare a national emergency over migration concerns.
“The situation is absolute chaos,” said Rachid Sbihi, head of the association that represents Spain’s Civil Guard officers in Ceuta, who police the border. “It’s not possible to give precise numbers, but there are thousands of migrants crossing,” he said, adding that the border had “totally collapsed.”
Read more at https://nypost.com/2026/07/30/world-n...
Friday, July 17, 2026
Hegseth's plan to screen military members for low testosterone...
Hegseth's plan to screen military members for low testosterone raises concern for doctors: "Not a performance drug"
By Kerry Breen
July 16, 2026 / 3:37 PM EDT / CBS News
A day after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that U.S. service members over the age of 30 will be annually screened for "testosterone deficiency," doctors are expressing skepticism of the program and its goals.
Hegseth said all service members over 30 will be screened as part of their regular health assessments, and that younger ones will have the option of being tested to ensure that they "have the right testosterone levels to operate at your absolute best." If they are recommended for treatment, they'll have the option to receive testosterone replacement therapy.
Hegseth has commented frequently on the physical standards of the military, connecting appearance and masculinity to combat readiness. Hegseth did not say what the new policy might mean for female service members, and other details have not yet been announced.
Doctors flagged a range of concerns about the policy, which is likely to be costly to implement. National organizations including The Endocrine Society and the American College of Physicians recommend against general screenings for testosterone levels, which can fluctuate based on age, lifestyle and even the time of day.
"Testosterone in the normal range is not a performance drug," said Dr. Céline Gounder, CBS News medical correspondent and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News. "For a man whose level is genuinely low, replacement can help libido and mood a little. It has not been shown to sharpen thinking, fix fatigue, or make a healthy 30-year-old a better soldier."
"No link to how masculine they are or feel or look"
Testosterone is a hormone naturally produced by the body. It helps maintain muscle and bone mass, and impacts mood and energy levels. It impacts libido and supports sperm production in men. But it isn't inherently linked to an increase in strength or capability, said Dr. Marcus Goncalves, director of the Holman Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at NYU Langone Health.
Friday, July 10, 2026
Religion’s Longstanding Gender Gap Is Narrowing Among Gen Z. But Which Gender Is Narrowing It—and Why?
by Chantelle Lee
Reporter
Jul 9, 2026 6:00 AM ET
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Photo-Illustration by Chloe Dowling for TIME (Source Images: Fabrice Lerouge—Getty Images; Weiquan Lin—Getty Images; Hiroshi Higuchi—Getty Images; Syuzanna Guseynova—Getty Images; SivStockMedia via Canva)
A gender gap has long persisted in religious identity. Historically, data has widely, and with remarkable consistency, shown women being more religious than men. But that appears to be changing when it comes to Gen Z.
Recent surveys indicate the longstanding gap is now closing among young men and women—and one even suggests that it might be beginning to open in the opposite direction.
Which gender is driving the shift, and why, is a matter of some contention, however.
Recent Gallup polling attributed the narrowing gender gap among Gen Zers primarily to a rise in religiosity—meaning the depth of religious belief—among young men. But other surveys have found no such change in young men’s religious identities, and have instead shown that the change is being caused by more young women turning away from religion—a trend that some attribute to young women’s frustration with the sexism that persists in some places of worship.
TIME spoke to pollsters, political scientists, religious leaders, and others about the data and what they make of it.
Are young men becoming more religious?
Gallup polling released in April found that in 2024-2025, 42% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 said religion was “very important” to them. That figure marks a jump of 14 percentage points from just two years before, when 28% of young men said this. It also shows a reversal of past gender dynamics: in previous years, women surpassed men in saying that religion is important to them. In 2012-2013, for instance, 51% of women between the ages of 18 and 29 said so, compared to just 41% of men in that same age group. In 2024-2025, meanwhile, just 29% of young women said religion is very important in their lives, notably lower than the 42% of young men who said the same.
“Historically, there has been a gender gap in religiosity in this country as long as we’ve had survey research,” says Frank Newport, a senior scientist at Gallup who worked on the poll. “What I think is important in our findings so far is that the gender gap among young Americans—18 to 29—has basically disappeared across several measures of religiosity. Men and women are either statistically the same or, in one measure, men are more religious, among 18 to 29 year olds.”
A gender gap has long persisted in religious identity. Historically, data has widely, and with remarkable consistency, shown women being more religious than men. But that appears to be changing when it comes to Gen Z.
Recent surveys indicate the longstanding gap is now closing among young men and women—and one even suggests that it might be beginning to open in the opposite direction.
Which gender is driving the shift, and why, is a matter of some contention, however.
Recent Gallup polling attributed the narrowing gender gap among Gen Zers primarily to a rise in religiosity—meaning the depth of religious belief—among young men. But other surveys have found no such change in young men’s religious identities, and have instead shown that the change is being caused by more young women turning away from religion—a trend that some attribute to young women’s frustration with the sexism that persists in some places of worship.
TIME spoke to pollsters, political scientists, religious leaders, and others about the data and what they make of it.
Are young men becoming more religious?
Gallup polling released in April found that in 2024-2025, 42% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 said religion was “very important” to them. That figure marks a jump of 14 percentage points from just two years before, when 28% of young men said this. It also shows a reversal of past gender dynamics: in previous years, women surpassed men in saying that religion is important to them. In 2012-2013, for instance, 51% of women between the ages of 18 and 29 said so, compared to just 41% of men in that same age group. In 2024-2025, meanwhile, just 29% of young women said religion is very important in their lives, notably lower than the 42% of young men who said the same.
“Historically, there has been a gender gap in religiosity in this country as long as we’ve had survey research,” says Frank Newport, a senior scientist at Gallup who worked on the poll. “What I think is important in our findings so far is that the gender gap among young Americans—18 to 29—has basically disappeared across several measures of religiosity. Men and women are either statistically the same or, in one measure, men are more religious, among 18 to 29 year olds.”
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
THE ADVENTIST CHURCH IS LED BY OLD WHITE MEN
Written by:
Simone Samuels
Am I the only one kind of unfazed by the pronouncements and decisions made at Annual Council last week? Or maybe I'm just jaded? I don't know.
We have a church that is, in my opinion, almost too organized and very hierarchical, with a bunch of old White men in leadership positions and not enough representation of POC (people of color) and women making decisions that will affect the 20 million Seventh-day Adventists worldwide. I know that there were ethnic delegates. I know that the resistance against women’s ordination comes mostly from our Latin and African brethren. However, the senior administration of the church is very homogeneous, at least in terms of age and gender and thinking. And I do not have stats, but I'm sure that if we are talking about voting members and delegates, it's not representative of at least the gender diversity in our church.
I love my brothers and sisters in Christ — regardless of gender, race, nationality, or differences in opinion. But representation matters, and when it comes to GC leadership and conference leadership and division leadership and union leadership, the representation is not there. Leadership — I'm not talking delegates, but there are problems there, too — is not reflective of our diversity. And it's a shame because we are one of the most diverse denominations in the world.
Our church is steeped in patriarchy and colonialism; for example, the idea that quiet, less exuberant forms of worship is the only right way to worship, and the tacit discrimination against female clergy members that ensures that administrative and senior leadership positions remain inaccessible to them.
Friday, September 02, 2016
The Idle Army: America’s Unworking Men
OPINION
COMMENTARY
Millions of young males have left the workforce and civic life. Full employment? The U.S. isn’t even close.
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
By
NICHOLAS EBERSTADT
By
NICHOLAS EBERSTADT
Sept. 1, 2016 6:40 p.m. ET
Labor Day is an appropriate moment to reflect on a quiet catastrophe: the collapse, over two generations, of work for American men. During the past half-century, work rates for U.S. males spiraled relentlessly downward. America is now home to a vast army of jobless men who are no longer even looking for work—roughly seven million of them age 25 to 54, the traditional prime of working life.
This is arguably a crisis, but it is hardly ever discussed in the public square. Received wisdom holds that the U.S. is at or near “full employment.” Most readers have probably heard this, perhaps from the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, who said in a speech last week that “it is a remarkable, and perhaps underappreciated, achievement that the economy has returned to near-full employment in a relatively short time after the Great Recession.”
Near-full employment? In 2015 the work rate (the ratio of employment to population) for American males age 25 to 54 was 84.4%. That’s slightly lower than it had been in 1940, 86.4%, at the tail end of the Great Depression. Benchmarked against 1965, when American men were at genuine full employment, the “male jobs deficit” in 2015 would be nearly 10 million, even after taking into account an older population and more adults in college.
Or look at the fraction of American men age 20 and older without paid work. In the past 50 years it rose to 32% from 19%, and not mainly because of population aging. For prime working-age men, the jobless rate jumped to 15% from 6%. Most of the postwar surge involved voluntary departure from the labor force.
Until roughly the outbreak of World War II, working-age American men fell into basically two categories: either holding a paid job or unemployed. There was no “third way” for able-bodied males. Today there is one: neither working nor seeking work—that is, men who are outside the labor force altogether. Unlike in the past, the U.S. is now evidently rich enough to carry them, after a fashion. The no-work life hardly consigns these men to destitution.
This is at least somewhat true throughout the affluent West, but the U.S. has led the pack. Not even in dysfunctional Greece or “lost generation” Japan has the male flight from work proceeded with such alacrity. The paradox is that Americans—those who do have jobs—are still among the rich world’s hardest-working people. No other developed society puts in such long hours, and at the same time supports such a large share of younger men neither holding jobs nor seeking them.
Who are America’s new cadre of prime-age male unworkers? They tend to be: 1) less educated; 2) never married; 3) native born; and 4) African-American. But those categories intersect in interesting ways. Black married men are more likely to be in the workforce than unmarried whites. Immigrants are more likely to be working or job-hunting than native-born Americans, regardless of ethnicity. High-school dropouts from abroad are as likely to be working or looking for work as native-born college grads.
What do unworking men do with their free time? Sadly, not much that’s constructive. About a tenth are students trying to improve their circumstances. But the overwhelming majority are what the British call NEET: “neither employed nor in education or training.” Time-use surveys suggest they are almost entirely idle—helping out around the house less than unemployed men; caring for others less than employed women; volunteering and engaging in religious activities less than working men and women or unemployed men. For the NEETs, “socializing, relaxing and leisure” is a full-time occupation, accounting for 3,000 hours a year, much of this time in front of television or computer screens.
Clearly big changes in the U.S. economy, including the decline of manufacturing and the Big Slowdown since the start of the century, have played a role. But something else is at work, too: the male flight from work has been practically linear over the past two generations, irrespective of economic conditions or recessions.
What we might call “sociological” factors are evident, not least the tremendous rise in unworking men who draw from government disability and means-tested benefit programs. There are also the barriers to work for America’s huge pool of male ex-prisoners and felons not behind bars—a poorly tracked cohort that accounts for one adult male in eight in the civilian population, excluding those in jail now.
Regardless of its cause, this new normal is inimical to America’s national interests. Declining labor-force participation and falling work rates have contributed to slower economic growth and widening gaps in income and wealth. Slower growth in turn reduces tax revenue and increases budgetary pressures, producing higher deficits and national debt. Unworking men have increased poverty in the U.S., not least among the great many children whose fathers are without jobs.
There are the social effects, too. The male retreat from the labor force has exacerbated family breakdown, promoted welfare dependence and recast “disability” into a viable alternative lifestyle. Among these men the death of work seems to mean also the death of civic engagement, community participation and voluntary association.
In short, the American male’s postwar flight from work is a grave social ill. Strangely, nearly everyone—the news media, major political parties, intellectuals, business leaders, policy makers—has managed to overlook it. The urgency of the moment is to bring this invisible crisis out of the shadows.
Imagine how different America would be today if another roughly 10 million men held paying jobs. It is imperative for the future health of the country to make a determined and sustained effort to bring these detached men back—into the workplace, into their families, into civil society.
Mr. Eberstadt is a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. This is adapted from his book “Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis,” out this month from Templeton Press.
Monday, June 20, 2016
Why America’s men aren’t working
The Washington Post
Ylan Q. Mui
The national unemployment rate has fallen by more than half since the nation emerged from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. It peaked at 10 percent in 2010 and stood at just 4.7 percent last month.
That’s mostly good news: Private employers have added more than 14 million jobs. About 2 million people have been out of a job for six months or longer, far too many but only about a quarter of the number of long-term unemployed people seven years ago. By almost every measure, the labor market has made incredible progress.
But there’s one statistic that has been vexing economists. The size of the nation’s workforce -- known as the labor force participation rate -- continues to fall. Since the start of the downturn, the percentage of that population that has a job or is looking for one has dropped more than 3 percentage points, to 62.6 percent, a level not seen since the 1970s.
The problem is particularly pronounced among men between the ages of 25 and 54, traditionally considered the prime working years. Their participation rate has been declining for decades, but the drop-off accelerated during the recession. The high mark was 98 percent in 1954, and it now stands at 88 percent. A new analysis from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, slated for release Monday, found that the United States now has the third-lowest participation rate for “prime-age men” among the world’s developed countries.
In other words, Greece, Slovenia and Turkey have a larger share of men in their workforces than the United States does. The United States beats only Italy and Israel.
The CEA’s analysis looks at several common theories behind why so many American men have dropped out of the job market. Legions of women have joined the workforce since the 1950s, when about one-third of them had a job or were looking for one. Women’s participation rate topped 50 percent in the late 1970s and peaked at about 60 percent in the early 2000s. Perhaps fewer men are working because their wives are bringing home the bacon instead.
But the share of women in the workforce also has decreased significantly since the recession. And the CEA found that less than a quarter of prime-age men have a working spouse -- and that number has actually declined over the past 50 years.
Economists have posited that Social Security Disability Insurance could be incentivizing men to enroll in government assistance rather than look for work. The number of disability insurance recipients has risen by 2 percent since the late 1960s, not enough to account for the much greater drop in the male workforce. The CEA estimates that the increase in disability insurance explains only about half a percentage point of the decline in the male participation rate.
Instead, the CEA concludes that the problem is one of education and the erosion of demand for low-skilled workers. More than 90 percent of college-educated men are in the workforce, compared with 83 percent of those with a high school diploma or less. It’s a theme seen time and again in our increasingly globalized and high-tech economy: Blue-collar jobs that were once the cornerstone of the middle class get outsourced or replaced by automation.
There’s a ripple effect, too. When a manufacturing plant shuts down, for example, the laid-off employees may wind up in lower-skilled jobs, displacing those workers and potentially forcing them out of the labor market.
The lower the wage, the more likely workers are to pass up the job altogether. The CEA looked at state-level data and found that among the bottom 10 percent of wage earners, a $1,000 increase in annual income boosted the participation rate by 0.16 percent for prime-age men.
“ When the returns to work for those at the bottom of the wage distribution are particularly low, more prime-age men choose not to participate in the labor force,” the report states.
The report also explores one more unorthodox explanation: the high number of men who have been incarcerated. The CEA notes that the U.S. prison population has grown significantly since 1990 and is far above that of any other developed country.
People in prison are not counted as part of the population for the purposes of labor market statistics. At first blush, that would actually boost the participation rate: A smaller population means the share in the workforce is larger. But in reality, there are immense and well-documented barriers to the job market for workers once they leave prison. And the gloomy prospects of the formerly incarcerated outweigh the statistical benefit of having a large prison population.
Of course, the CEA argues that White House proposals -- from familiar positions such as raising the minimum wage and expanding the earned-income tax credit to wonkier ones such as reforming community colleges and flexibility in claiming unemployment benefits -- can help more men return to the workforce.
But the bigger question is whether there is really a way to reverse the tide, or if the best hope is to merely mitigate the pain. For 60 years, economists have debated the answer. And still, the share of men in the workforce continues to shrink.
Monday, December 08, 2014
Able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness
14 And when Moses' father in law saw all that he did to the people, he said, What is this thing that thou doest to the people? why sittest thou thyself alone, and all the people stand by thee from morning unto even?
15 And Moses said unto his father in law, Because the people come unto me to enquire of God:
16 When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God, and his laws.
17 And Moses' father in law said unto him, The thing that thou doest is not good.
18 Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone.
19 Hearken now unto my voice, I will give thee counsel, and God shall be with thee: Be thou for the people to God-ward, that thou mayest bring the causes unto God:
20 And thou shalt teach them ordinances and laws, and shalt shew them the way wherein they must walk, and the work that they must do.
21 Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens:
22 And let them judge the people at all seasons: and it shall be, that every great matter they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge: so shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear the burden with thee.
23 If thou shalt do this thing, and God command thee so, then thou shalt be able to endure, and all this people shall also go to their place in peace.
24 So Moses hearkened to the voice of his father in law, and did all that he had said.
25 And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.
26 And they judged the people at all seasons: the hard causes they brought unto Moses, but every small matter they judged themselves.
27 And Moses let his father in law depart; and he went his way into his own land.
Exodus 18:13-27 KJV
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Tuesday, July 08, 2014
“Without Me ye can do nothing”
God knows with what fidelity and spirit of consecration everyone fulfills his mission. There is no place for the slothful in this great work, no place for the self-indulgent or those who are incapable of making life a success in any calling, no place for halfhearted men who are not fervent in spirit, willing to endure hardness, opposition, reproach, or death for Christ’s sake. The Christian ministry is no place for drones. There is a class of men attempting to preach who are slipshod, careless, and irreverent. They would better be tilling the soil than teaching the sacred truth of God.
Young men must soon bear the burdens older ones have borne. We have lost time in neglecting to bring young men to the front and give them a higher, more solid education. The work is constantly advancing, and we must obey the command: “Go forward.” Much good could be done by youth who are established in the truth and are not easily influenced or swayed from the right by their surroundings, but who walk with God, who pray much, and who put forth most earnest endeavors to gather all the light they can. The worker should be prepared to put forth the highest mental and moral energies with which nature, cultivation, and the grace of God have endowed him; but his success will be proportionate to the degree of consecration and self-sacrifice in which the work is done, rather than to either natural or acquired endowments. The most earnest and continued efforts to acquire qualifications for usefulness are necessary; but unless God works with the human efforts, nothing can be accomplished. Christ says: “Without Me ye can do nothing.” Divine grace is the great element of saving power; without it all human efforts are unavailing; its co-operation is needed even with the strongest and most earnest human efforts for the inculcation of truth.
Testimonies for the Church, Volume 5, p. 582,583
Young men must soon bear the burdens older ones have borne. We have lost time in neglecting to bring young men to the front and give them a higher, more solid education. The work is constantly advancing, and we must obey the command: “Go forward.” Much good could be done by youth who are established in the truth and are not easily influenced or swayed from the right by their surroundings, but who walk with God, who pray much, and who put forth most earnest endeavors to gather all the light they can. The worker should be prepared to put forth the highest mental and moral energies with which nature, cultivation, and the grace of God have endowed him; but his success will be proportionate to the degree of consecration and self-sacrifice in which the work is done, rather than to either natural or acquired endowments. The most earnest and continued efforts to acquire qualifications for usefulness are necessary; but unless God works with the human efforts, nothing can be accomplished. Christ says: “Without Me ye can do nothing.” Divine grace is the great element of saving power; without it all human efforts are unavailing; its co-operation is needed even with the strongest and most earnest human efforts for the inculcation of truth.
P.S. John 15:5
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Saturday, December 07, 2013
True and Honest Men
The greatest want of the world is the want of men
--
men who will not be bought or sold, men who in their
inmost souls are true and honest, men who do not fear
to call sin by its right name, men whose conscience is as
true to duty as the needle to the pole, men who will stand
for the right though the heavens fall.
- Education, p.57 \
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Friday, October 25, 2013
It's no time to raise children
In my opinion: That time has passed!
As I hear the recent fatal incidents involving young men (boys) in the United States of America; I confirm my assumption that it's no longer a time for raising children.
Increasingly young men are involved in various types of atrocious crimes; and each new one surpasses our understanding of what humans are capable of doing when they are not guided by the Spirit of God; The True God, the God of Abraham, Issac and Israel.
Cops release name of 12-year-old gunman in Sparks Middle School shooting in Nevada
Police have identified Jose Reyes as the seventh-grader who brought a 9-mm. handgun from home to kill math teacher, Michael Landsberry, and wound two 12-year-olds before turning the gun on himself at the Nevada school on Monday.
By Joe Kemp / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, October 25, 2013, 6:44 AM
Marilyn Newton/REUTERS
Officials said they tried to avoid releasing the name of the boy who shot up his school to protect his family.
The 12-year-old gunman who fatally shot a teacher and wounded two children before killing himself in a Nevada middle school has been identified as Jose Reyes.
The seventh-grader brought a 9-mm. Ruger semi-automatic from his home to kill beloved math teacher Michael Landsberry, 45, and shoot two other 12-year-olds in Sparks Middle School on Monday, police said.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/cops-id-12-year-old-gunman-sparks-middle-school-shooting-nevada-article-1.1496283#ixzz2ikNPuZKE
14-year-old followed teacher into bathroom, slashed her throat before she was found dead in woods: report
Philip Chism admitted to police that he followed math teacher Colleen Ritzer, 24, into a second-floor bathroom at Danvers High School — where he attacked her, according to a report. The teen used a recycling bin to bring her body to the wooded area behind the school.
By Beverly Ford In Danvers, Mass. AND Joe Kemp / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Thursday, October 24, 2013, 7:57 AM
Updated: Friday, October 25, 2013, 8:34 AM
Colleen Ritzer, 24, was reportedly killed after Chism followed her into a secoond-floor bathroom.
The 14-year-old boy accused of killing a beloved Massachusetts teacher has allegedly confessed to slashing her throat with a box cutter in a school bathroom before dumping her body in a nearby patch of woods, according to a report.
Philip Chism admitted to police that he followed math teacher Colleen Ritzer into a second-floor bathroom at Danvers High School — where he punched her in the face and sliced her throat, a source told FOX 25 News.
Patrick Whittemore/Boston Herald
Philip Chism, 14 — wearing a jail-issued white jumpsuit — was ordered held without bail after he was arraigned for the murder of Colleen Ritzer. Police did not provide any motive.
The teen stuffed the teacher’s body into a recycling bin, which he used to drag the dead woman to the wooded area behind the school on Tuesday, the news station reported. Students at the school told the Daily News that they spotted a blue garbage can with wheels along the edge of the parking lot, near where Ritzer's body was found.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/14-year-old-teacher-bathroom-slashed-throat-found-dead-woods-report-article-1.1495047#ixzz2ikNxegz5
California cops shoot dead 13-year-old boy armed with toy gun
Andy Lopez refused to drop his friend’s a plastic AK-47 rifle replica when police in Santa Rosa ordered him to on Tuesday, authorities say.
By Michael Walsh / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, October 23, 2013, 1:22 PM
AP Photo/Courtesy of Lopez family
Andy Lopez was shot and killed by sheriff's deputies in Santa Rosa, Calif. after repeatedly telling him to drop what turned out to be a replica assault rifle.
Californian police officers fatally shot a teen boy Tuesday afternoon because was armed with what looked like an assault rifle — but it was a toy gun.
Andy Lopez, 13, was struck with several rounds from the sheriff's deputies' handguns and fell onto the replica in southwest Santa Rosa, authorities said.
He was declared dead at the scene.
Sonoma County Sheriffs Office
This fake gun was found on the boy after he was killed. The officers who shot him have been placed on administrative leave.
RELATED: INSTAGRAM USED AS GUN MARKET WITHOUT RESTRICTIONS
"Why did they kill him? Why?" the teen's tearful mother, Sujey Annel Cruz Cazarez, said to The Press Democrat after returning from identifying the body.
"I told him what I tell him every day," his father, Rodrigo Lopez, said. "Behave yourself."
CBS San Francisco
Officers handcuffed Lopez after they shot him, then cordoned off the area.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/calif-cops-shoot-13-year-old-boy-armed-toy-gun-dead-article-1.1494144#ixzz2ikPFJSoq
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But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people.
Luke 21:23
As I hear the recent fatal incidents involving young men (boys) in the United States of America; I confirm my assumption that it's no longer a time for raising children.
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.
Increasingly young men are involved in various types of atrocious crimes; and each new one surpasses our understanding of what humans are capable of doing when they are not guided by the Spirit of God; The True God, the God of Abraham, Issac and Israel.
But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:
For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.
Matthew 24:20-22
Cops release name of 12-year-old gunman in Sparks Middle School shooting in Nevada
Police have identified Jose Reyes as the seventh-grader who brought a 9-mm. handgun from home to kill math teacher, Michael Landsberry, and wound two 12-year-olds before turning the gun on himself at the Nevada school on Monday.
By Joe Kemp / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, October 25, 2013, 6:44 AM
Marilyn Newton/REUTERS
Officials said they tried to avoid releasing the name of the boy who shot up his school to protect his family.
The 12-year-old gunman who fatally shot a teacher and wounded two children before killing himself in a Nevada middle school has been identified as Jose Reyes.
The seventh-grader brought a 9-mm. Ruger semi-automatic from his home to kill beloved math teacher Michael Landsberry, 45, and shoot two other 12-year-olds in Sparks Middle School on Monday, police said.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/cops-id-12-year-old-gunman-sparks-middle-school-shooting-nevada-article-1.1496283#ixzz2ikNPuZKE
14-year-old followed teacher into bathroom, slashed her throat before she was found dead in woods: report
Philip Chism admitted to police that he followed math teacher Colleen Ritzer, 24, into a second-floor bathroom at Danvers High School — where he attacked her, according to a report. The teen used a recycling bin to bring her body to the wooded area behind the school.
By Beverly Ford In Danvers, Mass. AND Joe Kemp / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Thursday, October 24, 2013, 7:57 AM
Updated: Friday, October 25, 2013, 8:34 AM
Twitter
Colleen Ritzer, 24, was reportedly killed after Chism followed her into a secoond-floor bathroom.
The 14-year-old boy accused of killing a beloved Massachusetts teacher has allegedly confessed to slashing her throat with a box cutter in a school bathroom before dumping her body in a nearby patch of woods, according to a report.
Philip Chism admitted to police that he followed math teacher Colleen Ritzer into a second-floor bathroom at Danvers High School — where he punched her in the face and sliced her throat, a source told FOX 25 News.
Patrick Whittemore/Boston Herald
Philip Chism, 14 — wearing a jail-issued white jumpsuit — was ordered held without bail after he was arraigned for the murder of Colleen Ritzer. Police did not provide any motive.
The teen stuffed the teacher’s body into a recycling bin, which he used to drag the dead woman to the wooded area behind the school on Tuesday, the news station reported. Students at the school told the Daily News that they spotted a blue garbage can with wheels along the edge of the parking lot, near where Ritzer's body was found.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/14-year-old-teacher-bathroom-slashed-throat-found-dead-woods-report-article-1.1495047#ixzz2ikNxegz5
California cops shoot dead 13-year-old boy armed with toy gun
Andy Lopez refused to drop his friend’s a plastic AK-47 rifle replica when police in Santa Rosa ordered him to on Tuesday, authorities say.
By Michael Walsh / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, October 23, 2013, 1:22 PM
AP Photo/Courtesy of Lopez family
Andy Lopez was shot and killed by sheriff's deputies in Santa Rosa, Calif. after repeatedly telling him to drop what turned out to be a replica assault rifle.
Californian police officers fatally shot a teen boy Tuesday afternoon because was armed with what looked like an assault rifle — but it was a toy gun.
Andy Lopez, 13, was struck with several rounds from the sheriff's deputies' handguns and fell onto the replica in southwest Santa Rosa, authorities said.
He was declared dead at the scene.
Sonoma County Sheriffs Office
This fake gun was found on the boy after he was killed. The officers who shot him have been placed on administrative leave.
RELATED: INSTAGRAM USED AS GUN MARKET WITHOUT RESTRICTIONS
"Why did they kill him? Why?" the teen's tearful mother, Sujey Annel Cruz Cazarez, said to The Press Democrat after returning from identifying the body.
"I told him what I tell him every day," his father, Rodrigo Lopez, said. "Behave yourself."
CBS San Francisco
Officers handcuffed Lopez after they shot him, then cordoned off the area.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/calif-cops-shoot-13-year-old-boy-armed-toy-gun-dead-article-1.1494144#ixzz2ikPFJSoq
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Friday, October 26, 2012
Will white men sink Obama?
By BRIAN MONTOPOLI / CBS NEWS/ October 26, 2012, 6:00 AM
Listen to President Obama and Mitt Romney on the campaign trail, and you could be forgiven for briefly thinking only one gender is allowed to vote. Both candidates regularly tailor their message to female voters: You can see it in the president's attacks on Romney's desire to cut Planned Parenthood funding and potentially appoint judges to overturn Roe v. Wade, and in Romney's claim that "this president has failed America's women" due to an uptick in female poverty.
There's a reason for this: Women are widely perceived as more likely than men to be swing voters. In the battleground state of Colorado, for example, both campaigns are open about the fact that they believe whoever makes the best case to suburban women will win the state.
Yet all the talk about women might make it easy to forget that men are a significant chunk of the electorate as well. While women outvoted men by about 10 million votes in the 2008 presidential election, men still made up 48 percent of the electorate. And white men alone made up more than one third of the electorate - 36 percent - according to national exit polls.
It's true that whites are slowly shrinking as a portion of the electorate as blacks, Hispanics and Asians grow in influence, which is why you don't see many news stories about them as a voting bloc. But they still pack a powerful electoral punch. White men, in fact, are providing the biggest drag on the president of any voting bloc as he tries to win another four years in the Oval Office. Even if the president gets his expected 80 percent support from minority voters, he is unlikely to win the election if he can't win more than one in three white men. And he might not.
A Washington Post/ABC News poll released this week found that white men support Romney over Mr. Obama 65 percent to 32 percent - a 2-to-1 margin. That suggests the president is doing worse among white men then he did in 2008, when exit polls showed he lost white men by a 57 percent to 41 percent margin. The poll also found white men moving away from the president: Romney's 19-point mid-October lead on handling the economy among the group has risen to 35 points today.
The 2008 numbers were actually pretty good for a Democrat, at least when it comes to recent history. Mr. Obama's share of the white male vote was the highest for a member of his party since 1976, when Jimmy Carter won almost half of white male voters. (In each of his two presidential elections, George W. Bush won white men by more than 25 points.) Yet Mr. Obama's support among white men appears to have slipped since 2008. A big loss among white men would particularly hurt the president in the Midwestern swing states of Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa.
The movement of white men away from Democrats over the past four decades, argued Progressive Policy Institute President Will Marshall, is tied to both the culture war and the perception of "a change in the focal point of Democratic economic policymaking."
"Many white men, and many, in particular, non-college white men, have not seen that the Democratic economic agenda is in their interest," said Marshall. "There's an account from the left that says these voters have been estranged from Democrats on social issues. And there's some truth to that. But I also think these voters believe the economic policies of Democrats have benefitted somebody else - not them. Women, minorities, interest groups. They don't feel that Democrats have championed the interests of white male voters in modern times as they did in the days of Roosevelt/Truman."
The good news - or the less bad news - for Mr. Obama is that the problem is far worse in the South than it is in the Midwestern swing states. Look specifically at the white working class, who were somewhat supportive of Bill Clinton in 1996 but have consistently broken against Democrats since that election. A survey released last month by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that Romney led 48 to 35 percent among whites lacking four-year college degrees who are paid by the hour or the job. Yet while Romney led by 40 points among southern working-class whites, the president actually led by eight points among Midwestern working-class whites. The president's relative strength among whites in the Midwest is the reason a state like Pennsylvania appears likely to remain blue despite a relatively large white population.
"The sense that he's doing better with white voters in the Midwest is the firewall for Barack Obama," Marshall said. "It's what's giving him hope that he can win in the Electoral College even if he potentially loses the popular vote."
Romney struggled in Midwestern states in the Republican primaries against Rick Santorum, and the Obama campaign's characterization of Romney as an uncaring plutocrat with little concern for the employees of the companies he bought and sold at Bain Capital may be particularly resonant there. The auto bailout also boosted the president among white working-class voters in Ohio and elsewhere in the region, and it helps the president that the region is more unionized than the rest of the nation.
"Obama has had policies that have helped the economy in the Midwest, particularly the auto bailout and the efforts to improve manufacturing," said Darrell West, vice president and director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He said that whites in the south and in rural areas, meanwhile, have "seen the downsides of the economic policies without getting very many of the benefits."
It's worth putting a point on the gender gap here: The PRRI study found that while Romney holds a 2-1 advantage among white working class men, the two candidates were tied among white-working class women. David Paul Kuhn, author of "The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma,"reported that Democrats have seen a 25 percent decline in white working-class male support between 1948 and 2004, even as white working-class women held steady. Democrats generally perform far worse with men than women, just as they perform worse with whites than minority voters.
The economic downturn may only have exacerbated the president's white male problem. The effect of the 2008 economic collapse has been dubbed a "he-cession" because it disproportionately left men out of work. "White men have suffered disproportionately from the recession, and it's been hard for them to make up for the lost wages," said West. "It's been a real challenge for Obama to convince those people they would do better in a second term."
The Obama campaign says its overall economic message resonates with all middle-class voters, including white men.
"Middle-class Americans, regardless of age, gender or race, have a clear choice in this election," said Deputy National Press Secretary Adam Fetcher. "President Obama is working to tell every American about his concrete, detailed plan to move America forward, get folks back to work and strengthen the middle class." Fetcher went on to attack Romney as "outsourcer-in-chief at Bain Capital."
The Romney campaign, meanwhile, is trying to win over white men with its argument that the president has been a poor steward of the economy. It has also targeted white working-class men in the Midwest by arguing that the president has engaged in a "war on coal," a message that is particularly resonant in southeastern Ohio.
The silver lining in all this for Democrats: The impact of their disadvantage among white men looks likely to diminish as time goes on.
"Democrats have a demographic problem with white men, but that portion of the electorate is shrinking. So it will become less of a problem in future presidential elections," said West. "The problem is for Democrats to get through this election. Their long-term strategy actually looks good."
Source
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JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GETTYIMAGES
There's a reason for this: Women are widely perceived as more likely than men to be swing voters. In the battleground state of Colorado, for example, both campaigns are open about the fact that they believe whoever makes the best case to suburban women will win the state.
Yet all the talk about women might make it easy to forget that men are a significant chunk of the electorate as well. While women outvoted men by about 10 million votes in the 2008 presidential election, men still made up 48 percent of the electorate. And white men alone made up more than one third of the electorate - 36 percent - according to national exit polls.
It's true that whites are slowly shrinking as a portion of the electorate as blacks, Hispanics and Asians grow in influence, which is why you don't see many news stories about them as a voting bloc. But they still pack a powerful electoral punch. White men, in fact, are providing the biggest drag on the president of any voting bloc as he tries to win another four years in the Oval Office. Even if the president gets his expected 80 percent support from minority voters, he is unlikely to win the election if he can't win more than one in three white men. And he might not.
A Washington Post/ABC News poll released this week found that white men support Romney over Mr. Obama 65 percent to 32 percent - a 2-to-1 margin. That suggests the president is doing worse among white men then he did in 2008, when exit polls showed he lost white men by a 57 percent to 41 percent margin. The poll also found white men moving away from the president: Romney's 19-point mid-October lead on handling the economy among the group has risen to 35 points today.
The 2008 numbers were actually pretty good for a Democrat, at least when it comes to recent history. Mr. Obama's share of the white male vote was the highest for a member of his party since 1976, when Jimmy Carter won almost half of white male voters. (In each of his two presidential elections, George W. Bush won white men by more than 25 points.) Yet Mr. Obama's support among white men appears to have slipped since 2008. A big loss among white men would particularly hurt the president in the Midwestern swing states of Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa.
The movement of white men away from Democrats over the past four decades, argued Progressive Policy Institute President Will Marshall, is tied to both the culture war and the perception of "a change in the focal point of Democratic economic policymaking."
"Many white men, and many, in particular, non-college white men, have not seen that the Democratic economic agenda is in their interest," said Marshall. "There's an account from the left that says these voters have been estranged from Democrats on social issues. And there's some truth to that. But I also think these voters believe the economic policies of Democrats have benefitted somebody else - not them. Women, minorities, interest groups. They don't feel that Democrats have championed the interests of white male voters in modern times as they did in the days of Roosevelt/Truman."
The good news - or the less bad news - for Mr. Obama is that the problem is far worse in the South than it is in the Midwestern swing states. Look specifically at the white working class, who were somewhat supportive of Bill Clinton in 1996 but have consistently broken against Democrats since that election. A survey released last month by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that Romney led 48 to 35 percent among whites lacking four-year college degrees who are paid by the hour or the job. Yet while Romney led by 40 points among southern working-class whites, the president actually led by eight points among Midwestern working-class whites. The president's relative strength among whites in the Midwest is the reason a state like Pennsylvania appears likely to remain blue despite a relatively large white population.
"The sense that he's doing better with white voters in the Midwest is the firewall for Barack Obama," Marshall said. "It's what's giving him hope that he can win in the Electoral College even if he potentially loses the popular vote."
Romney struggled in Midwestern states in the Republican primaries against Rick Santorum, and the Obama campaign's characterization of Romney as an uncaring plutocrat with little concern for the employees of the companies he bought and sold at Bain Capital may be particularly resonant there. The auto bailout also boosted the president among white working-class voters in Ohio and elsewhere in the region, and it helps the president that the region is more unionized than the rest of the nation.
"Obama has had policies that have helped the economy in the Midwest, particularly the auto bailout and the efforts to improve manufacturing," said Darrell West, vice president and director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He said that whites in the south and in rural areas, meanwhile, have "seen the downsides of the economic policies without getting very many of the benefits."
It's worth putting a point on the gender gap here: The PRRI study found that while Romney holds a 2-1 advantage among white working class men, the two candidates were tied among white-working class women. David Paul Kuhn, author of "The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma,"reported that Democrats have seen a 25 percent decline in white working-class male support between 1948 and 2004, even as white working-class women held steady. Democrats generally perform far worse with men than women, just as they perform worse with whites than minority voters.
The economic downturn may only have exacerbated the president's white male problem. The effect of the 2008 economic collapse has been dubbed a "he-cession" because it disproportionately left men out of work. "White men have suffered disproportionately from the recession, and it's been hard for them to make up for the lost wages," said West. "It's been a real challenge for Obama to convince those people they would do better in a second term."
The Obama campaign says its overall economic message resonates with all middle-class voters, including white men.
"Middle-class Americans, regardless of age, gender or race, have a clear choice in this election," said Deputy National Press Secretary Adam Fetcher. "President Obama is working to tell every American about his concrete, detailed plan to move America forward, get folks back to work and strengthen the middle class." Fetcher went on to attack Romney as "outsourcer-in-chief at Bain Capital."
The Romney campaign, meanwhile, is trying to win over white men with its argument that the president has been a poor steward of the economy. It has also targeted white working-class men in the Midwest by arguing that the president has engaged in a "war on coal," a message that is particularly resonant in southeastern Ohio.
The silver lining in all this for Democrats: The impact of their disadvantage among white men looks likely to diminish as time goes on.
"Democrats have a demographic problem with white men, but that portion of the electorate is shrinking. So it will become less of a problem in future presidential elections," said West. "The problem is for Democrats to get through this election. Their long-term strategy actually looks good."
Source
.
Monday, September 10, 2012
'End of Men' makes a strong case
Published: 09/10/2012, 08:25 AM
Updated: 09/10/2012, 08:31 AM
The End of Men
And the Rise of Women
By Hanna Rosin
Riverhead Books
310 pages; $27.95
By Melinda Miller
News Book Reviewer
The apocalyptic title of Hanna Rosin's new book is guaranteed to get attention, as it did when the magazine piece that inspired the book, also titled "The End of Men," appeared in The Atlantic in summer 2010.
But it is not to be taken too literally. There are still men.
What has changed, if you go by the measures Rosin cites, is how much men matter - to women and to society overall. For, while men still dominate the highest levels of business and government - after the flirtations last year with Hillary and Sarah, we are again in the midst of another all-boy presidential campaign - in the everyday lives of the shrinking middle class and the working poor, their roles undeniably have shifted, and even declined, to an unprecedented degree.
At the same time, women have become more empowered, and, though it is the smaller print on the cover of her book, this is where Rosin focuses more of her attention.
The trend is powered by the eternal engines of sex and money, Rosin contends, with a generational divide in expectations today that is every bit as great as, or perhaps greater than, the break decades ago that led to the coining of the term Generation Gap.
The behavior and life choices made by men and women in their 20s and 30s have finally tipped the scales from a social construct reliant upon male dominance at work, at home, on campuses and government to one in which, in nearly every arena, women have the larger role.
Among her well-supported statistics:
. More girls than boys graduate from high school.
. Of every five college degrees, three go to women.
. More women than men get advanced degrees.
. And, in an employment market now dominated by a service sector that values people skills over muscle power, women are finding it much easier to get and keep jobs. Although older generations still show men earning more, women in their 20s make more money than men of their age, and don't expect to have a man support them.
The result? According to Rosin, for many women, having a man in their life - specifically a husband - is no longer a necessity, and in many cases, could be considered a liability.
Rosin pulls this together in a narrative long on anecdote and interview, but well bolstered by a wide range of well-chosen reports and studies. It would be hard to deny that society and the part men play in it have changed. Left for discussion is: what does it mean?
Among Rosin's more interesting conclusions:
. The hook-up culture celebrated in TV reality shows, magazines and music is a fact of life for young adults, whether they take part or not. It appears to peak for most in their college years and is embraced as vigorously by women as by men. She cites research that shows women are in no hurry to enter into serious relationships that might hold them back; they enjoy sexual intimacy but are not yet interested in commitment.
. While men also enjoy the benefits of casual sex, she notes, they aren't necessarily making as productive use of their freedom as women. Hence the image of the "Peter Pan" man-child, devoted to fantasy sports teams, video games and porn, who, as one professor Rosin quotes points out, become so socially inept and financially undesirable, by the time they want a serious relationship, they are no longer considered suitable partners for "equal status female mates."
(That professor is Philip Zimbardo, who is co-author of his own take on this issue, "The Demise of Guys.")
. Because after sex - or perhaps even before - it's about the money. In this tough economy, an economy that has proven especially brutal toward manufacturing jobs, construction and other male-dominated professions, Rosin has had no trouble finding young women who are doing whatever it takes to take care of themselves. They are raising their children while going to school, and perhaps working, too, to get the skills demanded by new technologies and a burgeoning health care field - jobs that appreciate the traditionally female skills of listening, empathizing, responding and communicating.
These women, who may still remain in the lower income tiers, aren't looking for a man to rely on, because too many times they have found they cannot rely on men. Some are blunt about it. They don't view these unemployed or underemployed, socially stunted men as protectors and providers. These guys would just be one more person to take care of, one more mouth to feed.
Rosin does include in her book families in which love and affection are valued more than a paycheck, although even in those cases, the couples are far from the world of Ward and June Cleaver. There are no kings in these castles; men share the housework and child rearing, in many cases following directives from the women. (Even then, women continue to do the larger share of parenting and homemaking.)
The one place where Rosin did find men and women working together as partners and finding satisfaction in their marriage and families was among well-educated people with good jobs and comfortable salaries. Women are less likely to resent a man they see as an equal; men who feel accomplished themselves may be more able to "be there" for their equally accomplished wives - even if the wife, or the husband, decides to take time off for children. Rosin calls these "see-saw" marriages, with spouses taking turns being the power-person in the relationship. They could be the way of the future, she believes, as society as a whole embraces its feminine side.
"The end of men" has had other repercussions in the lives of women beyond economic. Rosin includes a chapter about the sharp decrease in violent crime against women, with statistics from a 2010 White House report showing a 60 percent decrease in reported cases of rape since 1993, along with cases of assault and domestic violence. She quotes Mike Males, a criminologist: "Girls have achieved a great deal more power. And that makes them harder to victimize." And, as another expert says, not being dependent also makes it easier for women to leave dangerous relationships.
(The flip side is that women themselves are becoming more violent, toward one another and their own domestic partners. More women are being arrested for violent crimes - still far fewer than men, but the numbers are trending up dramatically.)
So, is the rise of women the end of men?
Rosin is far from alone in exploring the phenomenon. Besides Zimbardo's book, there are Kay Hymowitz's 2011 "Manning Up: How The Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys;" "Boys Adrift," by Leonard Sax; Christina Hoff's "The War Against Boys;" "The Decline of Men," by Guy Garcia, and on and on.
They all believe that this is not a blip on the cultural radar that will disappear if the GNP suddenly doubles. Women are not going to march back to the kitchen and nursery, and factory doors are not going to fly open again. It is the end of something, and, in Rosin's view, it is going to be up to men to make their own new beginning.
Melinda Miller is The News' features editor.
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Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Shady Lady Ranch in Nevada makes history by getting approval to hire male prostitutes
BY Adam Sommers
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, January 6th 2010, 2:20 PM
Hey, guys, have you hit hard times? Is it hard to find a job? Has it been been hard to start a new career? Well, it may be hard to believe, but the Nevada sex industry may have a position — or two — for you.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the owner of the Shady Lady Ranch is looking for “a few good men” who are willing to become Nevada’s first legal male sex workers.
“This is a service whose time has come,” owner Bobbi Davis said in a letter to Nye County officials who had to approve of the business expansion.
A county liquor board’s vote Tuesday affirming that Davis could offer “shady men” to her clientele followed months of rancorous debate among the state’s legal brothel community, the Times reported.
George Flint, a longtime lobbyist for the Nevada Brothel Association, has said that allowing male prostitutes could be the industry’s Pearl Harbor. He has hinted that brothels possibly offering gay sex - a choice each prostitute, as an independent contractor, would be free to make - might sour some legislators on the entire brothel system.
“This is the first time in the history of the world . . . that men have been licensed to sell sex,” Flint said at Tuesday board meeting, his voice rising. “It’s never been done!
”According to the Times, Davis and her husband, Jim, merely hope to boost business. Their small outpost near Death Valley, about 150 miles northwest of Las Vegas, offers as many as five women, relies heavily on travelers and has gotten some requests for gigolos.
Davis figures that, even if it’s a flop, adding men to her roster is worth trying. She has been inundated with more than 100 applications, she told the Times, though she has held off on hiring until she’d cleared the last all bureaucratic hurdle on Tuesday.
At a contentious meeting of the Nye County Licensing and Liquor Board, Dennis Hof, owner of the Moonlite BunnyRanch, raised concerns about monitoring the spread of infectious diseases.
But Commissioner Lorinda Wichman would have none of it. “You guys can’t scare me,” the Times quoted her as saying before voting in Davis’ favor. “I’m going to try this.”
,
Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2010/01/06/2010-01-06_shady_lady_ranch_in_nevada_makes_history_by_getting_approval_to_hire_male_prosti.html
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DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, January 6th 2010, 2:20 PM
Hey, guys, have you hit hard times? Is it hard to find a job? Has it been been hard to start a new career? Well, it may be hard to believe, but the Nevada sex industry may have a position — or two — for you.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the owner of the Shady Lady Ranch is looking for “a few good men” who are willing to become Nevada’s first legal male sex workers.
“This is a service whose time has come,” owner Bobbi Davis said in a letter to Nye County officials who had to approve of the business expansion.
A county liquor board’s vote Tuesday affirming that Davis could offer “shady men” to her clientele followed months of rancorous debate among the state’s legal brothel community, the Times reported.
George Flint, a longtime lobbyist for the Nevada Brothel Association, has said that allowing male prostitutes could be the industry’s Pearl Harbor. He has hinted that brothels possibly offering gay sex - a choice each prostitute, as an independent contractor, would be free to make - might sour some legislators on the entire brothel system.
“This is the first time in the history of the world . . . that men have been licensed to sell sex,” Flint said at Tuesday board meeting, his voice rising. “It’s never been done!
”According to the Times, Davis and her husband, Jim, merely hope to boost business. Their small outpost near Death Valley, about 150 miles northwest of Las Vegas, offers as many as five women, relies heavily on travelers and has gotten some requests for gigolos.
Davis figures that, even if it’s a flop, adding men to her roster is worth trying. She has been inundated with more than 100 applications, she told the Times, though she has held off on hiring until she’d cleared the last all bureaucratic hurdle on Tuesday.
At a contentious meeting of the Nye County Licensing and Liquor Board, Dennis Hof, owner of the Moonlite BunnyRanch, raised concerns about monitoring the spread of infectious diseases.
But Commissioner Lorinda Wichman would have none of it. “You guys can’t scare me,” the Times quoted her as saying before voting in Davis’ favor. “I’m going to try this.”
,
Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2010/01/06/2010-01-06_shady_lady_ranch_in_nevada_makes_history_by_getting_approval_to_hire_male_prosti.html
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Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Black Males Hit Extra Hard By Unemployment
by Cheryl Corley
The country's spiraling unemployment rate is taking a particular toll on men as the recession continues to roil male-dominated industries, such as manufacturing and construction.
This "he-cession," as it's sometimes called, has hit African-American men especially hard, increasing their unemployment rate to more than 17 percent last month.
One of those unemployed black men searching for work is Randolph Smith. When Smith, 53, is working, he manages logistics, inventory and supplies for large companies. He's been trying to find that type of work since he was laid off a year ago — but so far, he's had no success.
Playing racquetball has been a lifesaver for Smith. He meets friends at a local health club about three or four times a week.
"Just to be able to come somewhere that's affordable for me, not far from home, to be around some good friends where there's camaraderie. To exercise and get the stress off my life."
Life Without Work
It's a stress that hundreds of thousands of black men face. The latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that African-American men over the age of 20 lead the country's jobless surge with an unemployment rate of 17.1 percent. These days, Smith's job is to look for work.
Smith lives in Richton Park, Ill. — a solidly middle class suburb about 30 miles southwest of Chicago. He and his wife, Sabrina, raised their now-adult son here. They've converted a bedroom into a home office with two desks, two computers and a file cabinet with plenty of Post-it notes attached. Sabrina is an administrative assistant at a local hospital, and is studying to be a nurse. This office is where Randolph conducts his job search.
"[I spend time] going through a lot of the search agents that have brought information or leads to me," he says. "Following with phone calls, just following up with any new connections that I can."
The Smiths cut back on vacations and don't go out much. And like any good inventory manager, Smith says he uses a spreadsheet for their grocery shopping.
"We know how to stretch a meal out, and we know how to eat rice and beans and make that last for a couple of days," he says. "So we're doing all the right things I think we need to do to keep things going and keep our costs down."
When Caterpillar Tractor Company started shedding jobs last year, Smith, a contract employee, was let go. It was not an unfamiliar situation. Throughout his career, just about every business Smith has worked for has closed, relocated or downsized. Typically, he's found another job quickly. Not so this time.
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"I think I'm marketable, and it would usually be no problem finding some work with a temp agency — enough that would suffice," he says. "Since the beginning of the year, it's been dry."
Smith says they get by on his unemployment and his wife's salary.
Several Factors At Play
Smith used to attend workshop readiness classes run by the Chicago Urban League. Even though he's highly skilled and a college graduate, he started to worry after coming up short on several job interviews.
"I wanted to make sure I was as polished as possible, and I just really had to get real with myself and say that I need some help here," he says.
Herman Brewer, the acting CEO of Chicago's Urban League, says plenty of men, regardless of race, have lost jobs during this recession. But he says black men continue to face many challenges that have traditionally led to their disproportionately high rates of unemployment. They include the decline of high-paying manufacturing jobs, high rates of incarceration, limited schooling and discrimination. So, Brewer says, the rise in unemployment is particularly tough on black men, "because many have had to overcome so much just to get where they were in a particular job."
And Brewer says many African-American men will personalize their job loss and withdraw socially. Smith admits some of his relationships have changed.
"I've had friends that have reached out and said, 'Hey, man, come on. I'll pay for a round of golf for you,' " says Smith. "Not that it's pride, but I just want to get through this myself."
Smith says his faith sustains him. He goes to church regularly. Once a week, he tutors children — and then there's the racquetball. Smith says that despite dismal job prospects, he knows he does have advantages. And he's hopeful he'll soon leave the ever-increasing ranks of African-American males who are unemployed.
African-American Male Unemployment
The unemployment rate for all African-Americans is about 50 percent higher than the nation as a whole — and even higher for African-American males.
The unemployment rate for all African-Americans is about 50 percent higher than the nation as a whole — and even higher for African-American males.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Credit: Nelson Hsu/NPR
Credit: Nelson Hsu/NPR
November 19, 2009
The country's spiraling unemployment rate is taking a particular toll on men as the recession continues to roil male-dominated industries, such as manufacturing and construction.
This "he-cession," as it's sometimes called, has hit African-American men especially hard, increasing their unemployment rate to more than 17 percent last month.
One of those unemployed black men searching for work is Randolph Smith. When Smith, 53, is working, he manages logistics, inventory and supplies for large companies. He's been trying to find that type of work since he was laid off a year ago — but so far, he's had no success.
Playing racquetball has been a lifesaver for Smith. He meets friends at a local health club about three or four times a week.
"Just to be able to come somewhere that's affordable for me, not far from home, to be around some good friends where there's camaraderie. To exercise and get the stress off my life."
Life Without Work
It's a stress that hundreds of thousands of black men face. The latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that African-American men over the age of 20 lead the country's jobless surge with an unemployment rate of 17.1 percent. These days, Smith's job is to look for work.
Smith lives in Richton Park, Ill. — a solidly middle class suburb about 30 miles southwest of Chicago. He and his wife, Sabrina, raised their now-adult son here. They've converted a bedroom into a home office with two desks, two computers and a file cabinet with plenty of Post-it notes attached. Sabrina is an administrative assistant at a local hospital, and is studying to be a nurse. This office is where Randolph conducts his job search.
"[I spend time] going through a lot of the search agents that have brought information or leads to me," he says. "Following with phone calls, just following up with any new connections that I can."
The Smiths cut back on vacations and don't go out much. And like any good inventory manager, Smith says he uses a spreadsheet for their grocery shopping.
"We know how to stretch a meal out, and we know how to eat rice and beans and make that last for a couple of days," he says. "So we're doing all the right things I think we need to do to keep things going and keep our costs down."
When Caterpillar Tractor Company started shedding jobs last year, Smith, a contract employee, was let go. It was not an unfamiliar situation. Throughout his career, just about every business Smith has worked for has closed, relocated or downsized. Typically, he's found another job quickly. Not so this time.
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"I think I'm marketable, and it would usually be no problem finding some work with a temp agency — enough that would suffice," he says. "Since the beginning of the year, it's been dry."
Smith says they get by on his unemployment and his wife's salary.
Several Factors At Play
Smith used to attend workshop readiness classes run by the Chicago Urban League. Even though he's highly skilled and a college graduate, he started to worry after coming up short on several job interviews.
"I wanted to make sure I was as polished as possible, and I just really had to get real with myself and say that I need some help here," he says.
Herman Brewer, the acting CEO of Chicago's Urban League, says plenty of men, regardless of race, have lost jobs during this recession. But he says black men continue to face many challenges that have traditionally led to their disproportionately high rates of unemployment. They include the decline of high-paying manufacturing jobs, high rates of incarceration, limited schooling and discrimination. So, Brewer says, the rise in unemployment is particularly tough on black men, "because many have had to overcome so much just to get where they were in a particular job."
And Brewer says many African-American men will personalize their job loss and withdraw socially. Smith admits some of his relationships have changed.
"I've had friends that have reached out and said, 'Hey, man, come on. I'll pay for a round of golf for you,' " says Smith. "Not that it's pride, but I just want to get through this myself."
Smith says his faith sustains him. He goes to church regularly. Once a week, he tutors children — and then there's the racquetball. Smith says that despite dismal job prospects, he knows he does have advantages. And he's hopeful he'll soon leave the ever-increasing ranks of African-American males who are unemployed.
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