By Saki Knafo
By refusing to hire people who have been convicted of crimes, employers may be adding billions of dollars to the total cost of the country’s ballooning food assistance program.
Citing data from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, estimated that about 2 million workers are shut out of the economy each year as a result of a felony conviction or a prison record.
Assuming these ex-offenders then rely on food assistance, and that half of them have an average of two kids, he said, their economic struggles cost taxpayers about $4 billion a year in food stamps alone.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the food stamp program, said information about the prison records of recipients is not collected at the federal level.
Baker acknowledged that this estimate is crude, and said the weak job market overall is what’s largely responsible for a recent jump in federal food stamp spending.
But the true number of ex-offenders receiving food stamps might be even higher; Baker’s calculations don’t account for the many ex-offenders who do find jobs but earn such low wages that they rely on food stamps anyway.
Read More Employment Discrimination Pushes Felons Onto Food Stamp Rolls, Increasing Program’s Costs.
soulbrotherspeaks.com 
Hip-Hop and the Globalization of ‘Nigga’
Dictionary (Photo credit: greeblie)
By Nicolas B. Aziz
In February, popular comedian Lisa Lampanelli (a 51-year-old Italian-American stand-up comedian and Harvard alumna) tweeted a picture of herself with Girls creator Lena Dunham saying, “Me with my nigga @LenaDunham of @HBOGirls – I love this beyotch!!” Interestingly enough, it would take an even older #and I suppose more renowned# white woman admitting in a legal deposition that she has used the derogatory term “a long time ago” to resuscitate America’s extremely redundant race issue discussions.
Paula Deen’s usage of “nigga” and/or “nigger” #I refuse to use “n-word” in writing as I think that is a beyond asinine epithet to use with anyone above the age of 12# has caused a circus among American media along with uproar within the black community. Many white and black Americans have ridiculed Deen for “ever using such a term.”
In addition to a steep decline in her public opinion, she has also taken a large financial hit. The celebrity chef has lost, according to New York Daily News, an estimated $12.5 million in earnings over this controversy, as companies such as Sears, J.C. Penney and Walgreens have rescinded ties with her cooking brand.
While I am in no way condoning Deen’s usage of the term, I am a realist. She is an elderly white woman from the south of America, which means there is an extremely high probability that this term was used in abundance, negatively, by her and those closest to her for many years.
The larger (and much less redundant) issue within this controversy regards the current state of the terms. Like it or not, “nigga” is one of the most universal words on earth; and this is moreover why a recent Facebook post labeling its users stole my attention.
Read More Nicolas B. Aziz: Hip-Hop and the Globalization of ‘Nigga’.