Tag: kansas city
Los Angeles Approves 67 Percent Minimum Wage Increase

Los Angeles Approves 67 Percent Minimum Wage Increase

Los Angeles has become the fourth-largest city to approve a minimum-wage increase.

Following in the footsteps of San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, and Oakland, low-wage workers will see their pay rise by 67 percent. Their hourly wage will go from $9 to $15 by 2020, with gradual increases every July 1, starting next year.

The Los Angeles City Council’s 14-1 approval is a victory for wage activist groups composed of labor unions, immigrant groups, and community activists, as well as the newly elected councilmembers who had scored another big victory last year with a $15.37 minimum wage for workers at large hotels, reported TheWashington Post. That win was used to leverage this increase, extending a similar increase to the city’s 3.88 million people.

“We’re leading the country; we’re not going to wait for Washington to lift Americans out of poverty,” Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti said in an interview. “We have too many adults struggling to be living off a poverty wage. This will re-­establish some of the equilibrium we’ve had in the past.”

According to TheNew York Times, the increase to $15 is unprecedented. An increase to $12 an hour would have roughly the same purchasing power as the minimum wage in the late 1960s, the most recent peak.

Economists are divided on the issue. According to a study by the UC Berkeley Labor Center, which examined the potential ramifications of a raise to $15.25 by 2019, a “ripple effect” is likely, meaning the pay of workers who earn more than the minimum wage could also increase. Most would be adults (median age of 33), and this would overwhelmingly benefit people of color, who represent over 80 percent of affected workers; a majority of Latino workers in the city will receive a pay increase. Half of the affected workforce is concentrated in just four industries: food services, health care and social assistance, retail and administrative, and waste management services.

Yet a study commissioned by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce said that the increase would force employers to cut jobs and raise prices, or even move their businesses to a more affordable location.

With measures to increase the minimum wage faltering on the national level, activists have concentrated on local municipalities. Although many coastal cities have gotten media coverage of their efforts, the movement is not restricted to just those locales. Kansas City, Missouri, has had a series of rallies on the issue, although local leaders there are concerned that any legislation would violate the state law. Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico have also enacted wage increases, according to data from National Employment Law Project (published as a graphic in TheNew York Times).

The move by the Los Angeles City Council has put pressure on New York lawmakers. The country’s largest city by population, New York City does not have a separate minimum wage apart from New York State, but Mayor Bill de Blasio is supportive of the increase. In a statement, he said, “Los Angeles is another example of a city that’s doing the right thing, lifting people up by providing a wage on which they can live. We need Albany to catch up with the times and raise the wage.”

The Los Angeles Times has published a comprehensive rundown on the increase.

Photo: Two activists in Kansas City rally for a minimum-wage increase in the city. (uusc4all via Flickr)

Pope OKs Resignation Of Missouri Bishop For Not Reporting Sex Abuse

Pope OKs Resignation Of Missouri Bishop For Not Reporting Sex Abuse

By Judy L. Thomas and Mark Morris, The Kansas City Star (TNS)

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Bishop Robert W. Finn stepped down as spiritual shepherd of the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese on Tuesday, nearly three years after he became the most senior U.S. Roman Catholic prelate convicted of criminal charges related to the church’s child sexual abuse scandal.

Some supporters expressed sadness, while critics hoped the departure could spur healing.

Neither Finn nor the Vatican provided a specific reason. But Finn cited the code of canon law that allows bishops to resign early for illness or some “grave” reason that makes them unfit for office, the Vatican said without elaborating.

Pope Francis accepted the resignation Tuesday, about a week after Finn made a short visit to Rome.

Finn is 62, some 13 years shy of the normal retirement age of 75.

“It has been an honor and joy for me to serve here among so many good people of faith,” Finn said in a statement released by the diocese. “Please begin already to pray for whomever God may call to be the next bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph.”

Supporters thanked Finn for his good works during a nearly 10-year tenure as the diocese’s leader.

“Bishop Finn, we love you, your pastoral heart, your love for Our Lady and ability to proclaim the gospel with a humble heart,” supporters posted on the website Justice for Bishop Finn, which appeared following the most recent sex abuse scandal. “We will miss you and be praying for you.”

Critics complained that Finn should have resigned much sooner from the 133,406-member diocese.

“Bishop Finn came to symbolize the elevation of a privileged clergy over the safety of children,” said Rebecca Randles, the attorney who filed dozens of lawsuits going back more than a decade involving sex abuse allegations against the diocese. “His resignation is needed by survivors of abuse and the Catholic faithful alike to begin a healing process. However, his resignation does not insure the protection of children in the future. Only continued vigilance can do that.”

Though the vice of someone else — a priest who liked to take pornographic pictures of little girls — brought Finn down, he failed to protect the public by failing to inform police for months, others pointed out.

It was time for Finn to step down, said Jim Caccamo, former chairman of the diocese’s Independent Review Board, which evaluated cases of suspected abuse and made recommendations to the bishop.

“When I heard the news, I said a prayer for Bishop Finn,” Caccamo said. “I don’t like what he did; I think he is culpable, but he’s still a human being, and he’s still a nice person. So I hope God helps him through this transition to a new life. Let the healing begin.

“I think just the fact that the pope has done what the pope has done will help a lot of people.”

Kansas City in Kansas Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann will serve as apostolic administrator of the western Missouri diocese until a new bishop arrives.

Naumann, who spent Tuesday with staff at the Kansas City diocesan offices, will retain his Kansas duties. He released a letter Tuesday in which he talked of a desire for this period between bishops to be a “time of grace and healing.”

“This will not be a time for innovation or change, but a time to sustain the ordinary and essential activities of the Church and where possible to advance the initiatives that already are underway,” it said. “I pray that your new bishop, when he arrives, will find a community united both in their love for Jesus and His Bride — the Church — as well as eager to proclaim the truth and beauty of His Gospel to the world.”

In September 2012, a Jackson County circuit judge convicted Finn of failing to report suspected child abuse, a misdemeanor, after church employees and leaders learned of child pornography on a priest’s computer. Finn received two years of probation with the agreement that the charges would be expunged from his record if he completed probation without incident, which he did.

The priest, Shawn Ratigan, pleaded guilty to producing child pornography. He is serving a 50-year prison sentence and has been expelled from the priesthood.

In Clay County, authorities also considered prosecuting Finn in the Ratigan case. Finn avoided a misdemeanor charge there by entering a diversion program that called for him to meet monthly for five years with Clay County Prosecutor Daniel White to discuss any allegations of child sex abuse against clergy or diocesan staff within the diocese’s Clay County facilities. They last met last week.

Finn’s resignation means the diversion agreement ends 1 { years early, White’s office said.

“During the past 3 1/2 years, Bishop Finn has always shown up for these meetings,” White said in a written statement. “It was a learning experience and injecting an outsider in the mix — me, someone who can trigger investigations and file charges — helped develop mechanisms that kept and will continue to keep children and vulnerable adults in the diocese safe.”

Finn’s handling of the Ratigan case prompted persistent calls for his resignation, including through billboards, a social media effort, an online petition and a letter-writing campaign to church leaders — even Pope Francis.

Finn had defenders as well, perhaps none more vocal than the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue, who has written that Finn came under fire because his orthodoxy offended “anti-Catholic zealots” and was out of fashion in a diocese that had strayed too far from traditional church teachings.

“Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph inherited a mess made by dissidents and cleaned it up,” a Catholic League dispatch noted in September. “That made him a target.”

Yet that month, the Vatican’s Congregation of Bishops, which advises the pope on bishop appointments, ordered a Canadian archbishop to investigate Finn’s leadership. O

Over three days that month, Archbishop Terrence Prendergast of Ottawa, Ontario, quizzed church leaders about how their parishes had responded to Finn’s criminal conviction and his leadership, a participant told The Kansas City Star.

Prendergast represented the Vatican in a similar investigation of the Irish church in 2010 and 2011. Such examinations, called “apostolic visitations” in church parlance, usually mean that church leaders in Rome believe something needs correction, experts said.

Finn, a St. Louis native, was ordained a priest in 1979. He served as an associate pastor of two St. Louis area parishes, then taught at St. Francis Borgia Regional High School in Washington, Mo., from 1983 to 1989. In 1989, he received a master’s degree in education administration from St. Louis University and became administrator of St. Dominic High School in O’Fallon, Mo.

In 1996, he was appointed director of continuing formation for priests in the St. Louis Archdiocese. Three years later, he was named editor of the St. Louis Review, the weekly diocesan newspaper.

In 2004, Pope John Paul II named Finn as coadjutor bishop of the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese. He assisted Bishop Raymond J. Boland and learned about the church here as he prepared to succeed him as the diocese’s sixth bishop in May 2005.

In an interview with The Star at the time, Finn described himself as a “a strict constructionist” who wanted his flock to be faithful followers of Vatican teachings.

Finn also acknowledged that he was one of a handful of U.S. bishops who belonged to the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, the organization for diocesan priest “associates” of Opus Dei, a conservative group that encourages Catholics to practice their Christian principles in their workplaces.

In response to a rising tide of sexual abuse lawsuits against the diocese, Finn in 2008 approved a $10 million settlement with 47 plaintiffs, raising hope among many that the church had found a way to conclude years of costly litigation and settle any questions about its sincerity in working on the problem.

But any goodwill the diocese accrued crumbled with Ratigan’s arrest in May 2011. An independent report, commissioned by the diocese, soon revealed that an array of senior church officials had known or suspected that Ratigan’s computer had brimmed with child pornography, some of which the priest had produced. Even so, they held off making a substantive report to law enforcement for five months.

A senior federal prosecutor later blistered Finn and the diocese for their handling of the case.

Diocesan legal bills mounted as state and federal authorities investigated church officials and employees when a new wave of sexual abuse litigation, this time filed by Ratigan’s victims, washed over the diocese.

Since 2012, the diocese has spent $16 million settling new lawsuits and millions more defending itself against sex abuse allegations. The most recent, a $10 million settlement in October, covered 32 lawsuits filed from September 2010 through February 2014 and involved 14 current and former priests in allegations of sexual abuse over three decades.

And an arbitrator in July 2014 ordered the diocese to pay $1.1 million for violating the terms of the 2008 settlement.

Still, defenders noted that the diocese has made progress on child protection issues since 2011. Finn instituted a child protection and training program for diocesan clergy, volunteers and employees that even his critics have applauded. The program instructs anyone who suspects abuse first to contact the Missouri Child Abuse Hotline or police, and only then to call the diocese’s abuse ombudsman.

In February, a group of Catholics based in Kansas City took the rare step of petitioning Pope Francis to discipline Finn.
The request, initiated by a Milwaukee priest and Kansas City-area parishioners, included an online petition signed by more than 113,000 people worldwide asking for the bishop’s removal. That petition now has more than 263,000 signatures.

It’s rare for a bishop to resign. In 2002, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, whose name became symbolic with the priest sex abuse scandal, resigned over his repeated failure to remove abusive priests from ministry. Pope John Paul II accepted Law’s resignation, and Law was moved to Rome, where he was put in charge of the Basilica of St. Mary Major. He has retired.

Although a few other bishops have resigned, those resignations were because of allegations of sexual impropriety against them, not because of how they handled cases involving their priests.

Only the pope can remove a bishop, the Rev. Thomas Reese, author of “Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church,” told The Star in 2011.

“The Vatican has to be convinced that what the guy did was egregious,” he said.

(c)2015 The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Mo.), Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Photo: Robert W. Finn is the leftmost bishop in the row of three. (Phil Roussin via Flickr)

Bank-Fraud Scheme Used Homeless People To Cash Checks

Bank-Fraud Scheme Used Homeless People To Cash Checks

By Mark Morris, The Kansas City Star

KANSAS CITY, Mo. –– Some Atlanta gang members had no clue in October 2011 that their future freedom rested on a routine chore performed by an convenience store employee in Olathe, Kan.
Cleaning up his trash bins about 6 a.m., the QuikTrip manager noticed that someone had dumped a large amount of what appeared to be stolen mail.

The resulting investigation into mail thefts at 20 Johnson County businesses pushed Kansas City area investigators and federal prosecutors into the forefront of a national bank-fraud investigation that has touched nearly all of the 48 continental United States.

About half of the 60 people prosecuted nationwide for hiring homeless people to pass electronically “cloned” — or counterfeit — business checks have been charged in Kansas City and Springfield, Mo.

“This is a huge problem for our service,” said postal inspector Steve Ryan.

The scheme has cost Kansas City area banks about $1 million in recent years, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Cowles said. He calculated the loss nationwide at more than $10 million.

That amount is even more significant when you realize it’s all headed to a fairly small place. Almost everybody prosecuted for this crime has ties to, or is a member of, a Bloods street gang that works two neighborhoods in one Atlanta ZIP code, 30317, Cowles said.

“They’re all from Atlanta, and they’re all doing the scheme the same way,” Cowles said. “Some of them are related to each other. Some live in the same neighborhood.”

Details of the scam came to light last week at the federal trial of Marion Norwood, a 46-year-old check printer from Atlanta who led crews into Kansas City in late 2012 and early 2013.
The jury took less than an hour of deliberations Wednesday to convict Norwood.

The tools of this bank fraud are relatively high tech: computers, printers, scanners, magnetic printer ink, and authentic paper stock used to print checks.

But none of it happens without a crowbar.

With it, criminals peel off the backs of those big shared mailboxes common outside business and industrial parks. They rifle through the letters looking for payroll checks or payments to vendors.

With checks in hand, printers like Norwood go to work on the computers, exactly duplicating the checks, down to signatures and the critical bank routing numbers.

Two other crew members, designated as the driver and the recruiter, then cruise homeless shelters, looking for someone interested in acquiring more money than they may have seen in the past six months, Ryan said.

Often, the driver and recruiter take the homeless people to a motel for a shower, a shave, and a change of clothes, because, as Ryan told jurors last week, “they look like homeless people.”

Gary Merritt, who has pleaded guilty in a related case and testified against Norwood, described the job this way:

“You pick up homeless people, dress them up, and take them to cash checks.”

First, however, the printer must put the homeless person’s name on the check as the payee. So the driver and the recruiter text the names of the homeless people to the printer.

Once the checks are cashed, the homeless person generally receives 10 percent of the face value, or $200 for a $2,000 payroll check.

Cuts for the drivers and recruiters are more substantial. Markus Bryant, who also testified against Norwood, said he and a recruiter once split $10,000 for two days of work in Kansas City.

Another associate recalled how Bryant described his time in Kansas City.

“He told me, ‘We’re eating good,’ ” testified DeMario Mormon, who is serving time for his role in an Alabama check scheme. “He said every time they went, it was good.”

Nobody at the trial last week could say how much the check printers made from a successful three or four days in Kansas City.

Ryan, the postal inspector, acknowledged that bank fraud might seem an odd career choice for gang members and street toughs. But the upside is that stealing with a computer carries less risk than running drugs and guns, he said.

Still, that doesn’t mean the participants like being associated with such a crime. Bryant testified that he once was questioned by Georgia authorities when a check scheme there went bust. Here’s how he remembered denying his role:

“Passing checks is for girls,” he said. “I’m a drug dealer.”

After waves of bogus business checks swept through the area in the last three years, local banks have taken steps to make it easier for firms to approve who cashes their large checks, Cowles said.

That’s been a welcome, if hard-learned, lesson for businesses, too.

Roger Manning, who owns an Independence promotional products company, saw his firm’s bank account cleaned out by Norwood’s scheme. Fortunately, the account had a relatively small amount of money in it, and the bank covered the loss once the checks were determined to be counterfeit.

Now Manning’s checks are loaded with more security features, and he’s using more Internet banking.

“It forced us to change with the times,” Manning said. “It’s a little scary. You’ve been doing this for 20 years, and then you see something else. It’s a shame.”

Photo: Ervins Strauhmanis via Flickr

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Obama Gets A Taste Of KC Barbecue Alongside Some Fellow Citizens

Obama Gets A Taste Of KC Barbecue Alongside Some Fellow Citizens

By Steve Kraske, The Kansas City Star

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — President Barack Obama feasted on working-class delicacies in Kansas City Tuesday night as he sought to bond with people unaccustomed to having the ear of the most powerful man in the world.

His presidential motorcade steered to Arthur Bryant’s Barbeque shortly after landing at Kansas City International Airport.

Once there, he met with four White House-chosen Kansas Citians over a half-slab of ribs, a Bud Light, and conversation about how what he does in Washington registers in people’s lives.

After picking up the tab, he moved to a corner of the restaurant where he greeted the four, put his hand on Becky Forrest’s arm, and looked her in the eye.

“When,” the president asked, “did you decide to get involved” in a neighborhood association?

That Obama chose to meet with “real people” has become standard operating procedure. He’s done it repeatedly throughout his time in office to connect with everyday citizens. He’s also used such meetings to drive home political issues.

The practice dates back years and through multiple presidencies.

“It endures because when you can put a face to a problem, when you can humanize a problem … it’s a very powerful way of communicating an idea,” said Steve Jacques, a Johnson Countian who performed advance work for Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Steve Glorioso, a longtime Kansas City political consultant who set up events for former Mayor Kay Barnes, said Americans like seeing top leaders connecting with seemingly ordinary people.
“That’s a very difficult thing to do, obviously, with a president,” he said. “They don’t have any other way to do it than to stage it.”

Wednesday, Obama will take the stage in more conventional fashion. He’ll give a speech about the economy to hundreds in the Uptown Theater in a message that will reach tens of thousands more in news reports.

Before arriving in Kansas City, Obama met privately Tuesday with wounded service members at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and spoke to the nation about the crisis in Ukraine. He didn’t arrive at Arthur Bryant’s until nearly 8 p.m.

The White House said it chose those who dined with Obama through letters each had written to the president. Every night, the president is said to read at least 10 notes from Americans.

Forrest, the one Obama addressed first, had written about the work of the Town Fork Creek Neighborhood Association east of the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She wanted the president to know, the White House said, that people in her community were working hard to improve their neighborhood and positively impact the lives of those around them.

Victor Fugate had written to thank the president for help repaying a student loan through the Income-Based Repayment Plan. Through the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, Fugate used an insurance exchange to get health coverage when he was laid off from his job as a financial counselor. He now works for the Missouri Department of Mental Health.

Mark Turner teaches a high school equivalency degree course for the Full Employment Council. The White House said he wrote the president about trying to make a difference in the lives of young people.

The president’s aides noted that the council was among local agencies that received a $1 million U.S. Labor Department grant for educational and job-related services for juvenile offenders and at-risk youth.

Valerie McCaw wrote the president about challenges she faces as a single mother and owner of a small business. She started VSM Engineering 11 years ago and has four part-time employees. She’s struggling, according to the White House, to pay her son’s out-of-state college tuition of almost $40,000 a year.

In a White House video of the president’s spokesman inviting the four to dinner — press secretary Josh Earnest hails from Kansas City — McCaw said she wrote her letter to the president in the middle of the night.

“I can’t work any harder,” she said. “I’ve got to work smarter.”

The meal, and conversation, proceeded after reporters and photographers were ushered out of the restaurant. Obama left the legendary barbecue joint about 9 p.m. and spent the night in a downtown hotel.

Glorioso said the president deserves credit for at least trying to get out of the suffocating bubble that defines an American presidency.

“There are so many filters between a president (and the people), that a president is just overwhelmed,” Glorioso said. “He’s the leader of the free world. With all the things going on in the world right now, to spend an evening talking to people is commendable.”

Republicans didn’t see it that way. They said the president picked an odd time to leave Washington. Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt pointed out that Obama left town with Congress still grappling with bills aimed at improving border security, transportation, and the Veterans Administration health care program.

“The timing could’ve been a little better. … The president’s got the traveling and campaigning part of the job down just right,” he said. “It’s the managing part of the job and the getting-things-done part of the job that appear to be a big question.”

But Democrats say even a somewhat-staged opportunity to break bread with somebody who doesn’t work for the White House, or isn’t engaged in its politics, beats staying bottled up in the White House.

“(Presidents) feel trapped,” said Martin Hamburger, a long-time Democratic political consultant. “It probably does give them perspective.”

AFP Photo/Jewel Samad

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