From today’s Tribune

Last updated on: March 1, 2015 at 10:19 pm by Jane the Actuary

From today’s Tribune 2015-03-01T22:19:02-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Mondays, when the Trib features lots of wire reports and general human interest stories because its reporters had the weekend off.

“Gun violence gave grandma heart-wrenching choice“: a report on a grandmother caring for her 3-year old grandson, who was severely damaged when his mother was shot and killed while she was 8 months pregnant. At birth, he was diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state, and doctors recommended she remove him from life support.

Weeks later, she set the date to pull the plug — Oct. 20, 2011, what would have been her daughter’s 18th birthday. But she had a change of heart as she entered Advocate Christ Medical Center that day.

“I couldn’t see turning the machine off on him,” Jefferson said tearfully. “Who am I to judge whether he lives or dies, OK?”

For the past year, he’s lived at her home, with two shifts of in-home nurses. And I’m not really interested in going into the question of whether she made the “right” choice in keeping him on the ventilator — I believe that she had the right to make that choice, just as much as others have the right to make the opposite choice.

But the background to this current state is just another story of “what’s wrong in inner cities.” His mother was just 17 when she was shot, and left behind another son, who was one year old at the time his mother was shot. If the father of either child is involved in any way in their lives, the story doesn’t mention it (yes, of course, reporters have to make decisions about what to include, but you’d think any attention shown by the father would be of interest). And the mother was out at 10:30 at night, with her mother babysitting, “walking with a friend” who happened to be a gang member, when a rival gang member approached them, shot at the “friend,” who ran off, then shot her in the head. Is it standard operating procedures for gang members to shoot outsiders in cold blood, or are the victims in such cases in some way considered as gang members themselves?

What’s more, the suspect has been jailed since that point. For three years. The trial was set to begin last week, but the court proceeding was delayed for unspecified reasons. Which means that the system has denied this man his right to a speedy trial, and unless the case is water-tight, I would assume that the long delays increase the risk that the suspect walks.

Then, two quick wire-service articles in the Business section:

“More employers demand college degrees, study finds” (The link is to the LA Times because the two publications share much of this type of reporting): a report by the labor analytics firm Burning Glass Technologies found that more employers are demanding, in their help-wanted ads, college degrees for positions that have historically not required this. The top example is executive assistants: 20% of people currently holding this position have a degree, but 65% of postings require it.

“The open question is whether employers are requiring a college degree because those job seekers bring something that lower levels of credentials don’t, or whether it was a rule-of-thumb filter that someone put in along the way,” [Burning Glass Chief Executive Matt] Sigelman said. “Is it a conscious decision or something that’s just sort of happened?”

I’m not sure what Sigelman means by “rule-of-thumb filter” but I imagine that he’s thinking of a way of filtering out the large number of applications that prospective employers receive in our current tight job market.

Here’s the original report, which I myself haven’t read yet, but intend to do later today.

And:

“More seniors are carrying student loan debt into retirement“: The numbers are small, but worrisome. From a GAO report on the topic:

More seniors are seeing a portion of their Social Security benefits garnished to pay back the debt. The number of people whose benefits were cut to pay for student loan debt grew to 155,000 in 2013 from 31,000 in 2002. Among those age 65 and older, the number grew by 500 percent over that time period, to 36,000 from about 6,000.

Again, I want to find the original report, made harder by the fact that the Trib article doesn’t give the report’s title. How broad a definition of “student loan” does this include? Does it include PLUS loans? (For that matter, are these loans dischargeable? You don’t hear about them much.) Loans where they’ve co-signed for a child?

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college degree requirements

financial aid

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