Singers Joan Sebastian, Pepe Aguilar and Shaila Durcal, three major artists in Mexican music, are heading to 15 cities as part of a U.S. tour that kicks off June 22 in Washington, D.C., the artists announced during a press conference in Los Angeles.
Originally reported by Billboard, the tour will officially be called "Dejando Huella… Una Historia Musical," and is being produced by Viva Entertainment Network in conjunction with the Chicago-based Cárdenas Marketing Network and Agave Promotions.
While Billboard initially reported Yuridia would be the opening act, it will now be Durcal who will open most of the shows while Silvestre Dangond will open the second show of the tour in New York on June 24 at the IZOD Center.
Don't miss the Billboard Latin Music Conference & Awards, presented by State Farm taking place next week, April 23-26, 2012 at the JW Marriott Marquis, Miami. This year's conference includes Q&As with Pitbull and Jenni Rivera, the 2nd annual Latin Music Marketing Awards, and execs like Target VP of entertainment John Butcher and Univision radio president Jose Valle. Visit BillboardLatinConference.com for details.
The tour will include Latin equestrian shows that have traditionally been part of Aguilar and Sebastian's sets in addition to "jaripeo" performances that are considered a form of bull riding practiced in Mexico. The modern form in "charreada" are called "jineteo de toro," which requires the rider to stay on the bull as long as possible.
Tickets go on sale today at ticketmaster.com and each venue's box office.
Here are the North American Dejando Huella tour dates:
June 22: Washington, D.C. (Patriot Center, no opening act)
June 24: New York (IZOD Center)
June 29: Las Vegas (Orleans Arena)
June 30: Stockton, Calif. (Stockton Arena)
July 1: Salinas, Calif. (Salinas Sports Complex)
July 13: San Antonio (Freeman Coliseum)
July 14: Houston (Toyota Center)
July 15: Dallas (American Airlines Center)
Sept. 22: Kansas City (Sprint Center)
Sept. 23: Chicago (Allstate Arena)
Sept. 28: El Paso, Texas (El Paso Coliseum)
Sept. 29: Laredo, Texas (Laredo Energy Arena)
Sept. 30: Hidalgo, Texas (State Farm Arena)
Broadcasting to the Latino Community in Kansas City and Worldwide
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Mexico pres front-runner promises to cut violence - KansasCity.com
Mexico pres front-runner promises to cut violence - KansasCity.com
MEXICO CITY -- Shortly after sunrise last month in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, police found 14 butchered bodies in a van outside city hall, a salvo in a seesawing battle of horrors between Mexico's two most powerful drug cartels.
Soon after, nine people were hanged from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo. Fourteen heads were left in coolers outside city hall. Eighteen mutilated bodies were dumped by a scenic lake in western Mexico. The decapitated bodies of 49 people were dumped outside a small town 75 miles from the U.S. border.
The man who appears likely to become Mexico's next president says he can ease the waves of violence consuming the country by changing the focus of its six-year offensive against organized crime.
Mexico's current administration has targeted the top ranks of the country's drug cartels, deploying thousands of troops to capture crime kingpins and seize their drugs and weapons, often in close coordination with the U.S. It is not uncommon for President Felipe Calderon's administration to boast of its success in arresting many of the country's most-wanted men.
Enrique Pena Nieto, who has a double-digit lead five weeks before the July 1 election, says his top security priority will not be arresting the leaders of the organizations that move hundreds of millions of dollars of narcotics each year into the United States. Instead, he and his advisers say, they will focus the government's resources on reducing homicide, kidnapping and extortion - the crimes that do the most damage to the greatest number of Mexicans - by flooding police and troops into towns and cities with the highest rates of violent crime.
"This doesn't mean that we don't pay attention to other crimes, or that we don't fight drug trafficking, but the central theme at this time is diminishing violence in the country," Pena Nieto told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
Pena Nieto's campaign said drug cartels could still be attacked, particularly if they carry out murders, kidnappings and extortion, but arresting their leaders will no longer be the focus of government efforts.
"Each administration chooses its operational objectives, and the objective per se is not the extradition or capture of big bosses, or the burning of seized drugs," Pena Nieto's campaign coordinator, Luis Videgaray, told the AP.
Some observers say that a strategy to reduce violence above all else could mean that drug dealers who conduct their businesses discreetly will be quietly left alone.
"I think that it's very clear that he's moving in the direction of concentrating the resources that the federal state has (toward) fighting crime and violence that affect people in Mexico ... as opposed to concentrating the resources on combating drug trafficking," said Former Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda. ""If you have scarce resources and you're focusing them on A, you're not focusing them on B."
Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by its Spanish initials as the PRI, ruled Mexico for 70 years until it lost the presidency in 2000, and high-ranking party figures and their relatives were often accused of striking deals with cartels in exchange for political protection. Violence was far lower, in large part because cartels maintained uncontested control of smuggling routes in many parts of the country.
Opponents have been quick to say that Pena Nieto will go back to the old PRI model of cutting a deal with cartels.
"They've shown themselves to be absolutely tolerant of organized crime," said Josefina Vazquez Mota told Spanish newspaper El Pais in a recent interview. Vazquez Mota is running on the presidential ticket for the National Action Party.
With Mexicans expressing strong support in polls for a militarized confrontation with crime, Pena Nieto is promising continuity in key aspects of Mexico's U.S.-backed drug war.
He has rejected legalization, called for more cooperation with Washington and praised Calderon's decision to confront the cartels shortly after taking office. On the campaign trail, Pena Nieto has been emphasizing his plans to maintain or increase the military presence in violence-torn cities like Monterrey and Veracruz. He has pledged an increase in the number of federal police officers from 36,000 to 50,000, and is also proposing a new semi-military police force composed of former soldiers and marines under civilian command that would be deployed to the towns and cities suffering from the highest violence and weakest policing.
But those pledges imply a subtle but potentially important change.
Pena Nieto's new approach "would not stop fighting the drug cartels but it would shift from targeting the heads of the cartels," campaign spokesman Diego Gomez said. "What Calderon has been doing is just targeting a few main cartels and splitting them up and what you have is chaos."
All three major Mexican presidential candidates have been criticized for vagueness of their proposals on conducting the war against crime, and many observers have remarked upon the absence of debate about the direction of the country's security policy.
Vazquez Mota has been vocally supportive of her party's current policy, pledging to expand the federal police to 150,000, a roughly four-fold increase over current numbers. Fellow backers of the current U.S. Mexican strategy argue that the attack on cartels is showing results, with crime groups weakened by Calderon's six-year offensive, and preliminary and unofficial statistics showing signs of violent crimes beginning to wane in some parts of the country.
Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has placed more emphasis on withdrawing back the military from the streets, fighting corruption among government officials and reducing crime by reducing social inequality.
A change in approach would align Pena Nieto with a new strain of thinking in public-policy circles in Mexico and the United States that calls for making violence the overwhelming focus of law-enforcement activity in the drug war, deemphasizing narcotics trafficking and other crimes.
"I and other people have been advocating for a strategy that focuses on reduction in violence," said Eric Olson, who oversees studies of U.S.-Mexico security cooperation and research on organized crime and drug trafficking at the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
Olson acknowledged that the focus on violence could mean relenting in operations against cartels that use less violence than their rivals, but he called that a necessary and temporary letup in order to get a handle on Mexico's biggest problem, the violence that is terrorizing the population and undermining the legitimacy of the state.
first.""Crime will always exist. The question is can you make it less harmful and get it out of people's lives as much as possible," he said. "It's not a de facto negotiation with them. It's a question of what comes
MEXICO CITY -- Shortly after sunrise last month in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, police found 14 butchered bodies in a van outside city hall, a salvo in a seesawing battle of horrors between Mexico's two most powerful drug cartels.
Soon after, nine people were hanged from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo. Fourteen heads were left in coolers outside city hall. Eighteen mutilated bodies were dumped by a scenic lake in western Mexico. The decapitated bodies of 49 people were dumped outside a small town 75 miles from the U.S. border.
The man who appears likely to become Mexico's next president says he can ease the waves of violence consuming the country by changing the focus of its six-year offensive against organized crime.
Mexico's current administration has targeted the top ranks of the country's drug cartels, deploying thousands of troops to capture crime kingpins and seize their drugs and weapons, often in close coordination with the U.S. It is not uncommon for President Felipe Calderon's administration to boast of its success in arresting many of the country's most-wanted men.
Enrique Pena Nieto, who has a double-digit lead five weeks before the July 1 election, says his top security priority will not be arresting the leaders of the organizations that move hundreds of millions of dollars of narcotics each year into the United States. Instead, he and his advisers say, they will focus the government's resources on reducing homicide, kidnapping and extortion - the crimes that do the most damage to the greatest number of Mexicans - by flooding police and troops into towns and cities with the highest rates of violent crime.
"This doesn't mean that we don't pay attention to other crimes, or that we don't fight drug trafficking, but the central theme at this time is diminishing violence in the country," Pena Nieto told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
Pena Nieto's campaign said drug cartels could still be attacked, particularly if they carry out murders, kidnappings and extortion, but arresting their leaders will no longer be the focus of government efforts.
"Each administration chooses its operational objectives, and the objective per se is not the extradition or capture of big bosses, or the burning of seized drugs," Pena Nieto's campaign coordinator, Luis Videgaray, told the AP.
Some observers say that a strategy to reduce violence above all else could mean that drug dealers who conduct their businesses discreetly will be quietly left alone.
"I think that it's very clear that he's moving in the direction of concentrating the resources that the federal state has (toward) fighting crime and violence that affect people in Mexico ... as opposed to concentrating the resources on combating drug trafficking," said Former Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda. ""If you have scarce resources and you're focusing them on A, you're not focusing them on B."
Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by its Spanish initials as the PRI, ruled Mexico for 70 years until it lost the presidency in 2000, and high-ranking party figures and their relatives were often accused of striking deals with cartels in exchange for political protection. Violence was far lower, in large part because cartels maintained uncontested control of smuggling routes in many parts of the country.
Opponents have been quick to say that Pena Nieto will go back to the old PRI model of cutting a deal with cartels.
"They've shown themselves to be absolutely tolerant of organized crime," said Josefina Vazquez Mota told Spanish newspaper El Pais in a recent interview. Vazquez Mota is running on the presidential ticket for the National Action Party.
With Mexicans expressing strong support in polls for a militarized confrontation with crime, Pena Nieto is promising continuity in key aspects of Mexico's U.S.-backed drug war.
He has rejected legalization, called for more cooperation with Washington and praised Calderon's decision to confront the cartels shortly after taking office. On the campaign trail, Pena Nieto has been emphasizing his plans to maintain or increase the military presence in violence-torn cities like Monterrey and Veracruz. He has pledged an increase in the number of federal police officers from 36,000 to 50,000, and is also proposing a new semi-military police force composed of former soldiers and marines under civilian command that would be deployed to the towns and cities suffering from the highest violence and weakest policing.
But those pledges imply a subtle but potentially important change.
Pena Nieto's new approach "would not stop fighting the drug cartels but it would shift from targeting the heads of the cartels," campaign spokesman Diego Gomez said. "What Calderon has been doing is just targeting a few main cartels and splitting them up and what you have is chaos."
All three major Mexican presidential candidates have been criticized for vagueness of their proposals on conducting the war against crime, and many observers have remarked upon the absence of debate about the direction of the country's security policy.
Vazquez Mota has been vocally supportive of her party's current policy, pledging to expand the federal police to 150,000, a roughly four-fold increase over current numbers. Fellow backers of the current U.S. Mexican strategy argue that the attack on cartels is showing results, with crime groups weakened by Calderon's six-year offensive, and preliminary and unofficial statistics showing signs of violent crimes beginning to wane in some parts of the country.
Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has placed more emphasis on withdrawing back the military from the streets, fighting corruption among government officials and reducing crime by reducing social inequality.
A change in approach would align Pena Nieto with a new strain of thinking in public-policy circles in Mexico and the United States that calls for making violence the overwhelming focus of law-enforcement activity in the drug war, deemphasizing narcotics trafficking and other crimes.
"I and other people have been advocating for a strategy that focuses on reduction in violence," said Eric Olson, who oversees studies of U.S.-Mexico security cooperation and research on organized crime and drug trafficking at the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
Olson acknowledged that the focus on violence could mean relenting in operations against cartels that use less violence than their rivals, but he called that a necessary and temporary letup in order to get a handle on Mexico's biggest problem, the violence that is terrorizing the population and undermining the legitimacy of the state.
first.""Crime will always exist. The question is can you make it less harmful and get it out of people's lives as much as possible," he said. "It's not a de facto negotiation with them. It's a question of what comes
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Obama, Romney campaigns target young Hispanics with cellphones - KansasCity.com
Obama, Romney campaigns target young Hispanics with cellphones - KansasCity.com
Young voters and Hispanic voters are far more likely to use their phones to go online than older generations are, so campaigns that use mobile technology are most likely to reach young Hispanics, according to Peter Levine, the director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
That’s because a mobile phone and an app are personalized and engaging – a far cry from a robocall or a TV ad. Young voters are deeply skeptical of one-for-all marketing and respond best to one-on-one, Hispanic-to-Hispanic marketing, according to research by Levine’s group.
It’s “particularly effective in overcoming issues of trust and motivation that would otherwise be in the way of voting,” Levine said.
Alex Velasco, a 26-year-old first-generation Mexican-American, said Levine’s assessments were right on.
“It’s really easy to reach me on my phone because I have it with me all the time – when I’m on the train, when I’m walking,” Velasco said. “If you send me something political (on my phone), I would be way more likely to read it because it is so easy.”
According to Levine, promoting civic engagement via mobile phones is a technique that’s especially well-suited to the Hispanic community. Hispanic voters have a greater barrier to enter the political system, he said. Many don’t have proper identification or have never voted, so a mobile app gives a much-needed push to the polls. Other experts say mobile phones fit the lifestyles of Hispanic voters more than they do those of the general population.
Democratic President Barack Obama’s campaign is ahead of Republican Mitt Romney’s in using the mobile platform. While both have mobile-optimized websites, the president also has launched the Latinos for Obama website optimized for mobile devices.
“The promise and power of digital is to reach people in the places where they already are, and get them using social tools to spread the word about the president to their own networks,” said Gabriela Domenzain, the Obama campaign’s director of Hispanic media.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/05/22/3624461/obama-romney-campaigns-target.html#storylink=cpy
Young voters and Hispanic voters are far more likely to use their phones to go online than older generations are, so campaigns that use mobile technology are most likely to reach young Hispanics, according to Peter Levine, the director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
That’s because a mobile phone and an app are personalized and engaging – a far cry from a robocall or a TV ad. Young voters are deeply skeptical of one-for-all marketing and respond best to one-on-one, Hispanic-to-Hispanic marketing, according to research by Levine’s group.
It’s “particularly effective in overcoming issues of trust and motivation that would otherwise be in the way of voting,” Levine said.
Alex Velasco, a 26-year-old first-generation Mexican-American, said Levine’s assessments were right on.
“It’s really easy to reach me on my phone because I have it with me all the time – when I’m on the train, when I’m walking,” Velasco said. “If you send me something political (on my phone), I would be way more likely to read it because it is so easy.”
According to Levine, promoting civic engagement via mobile phones is a technique that’s especially well-suited to the Hispanic community. Hispanic voters have a greater barrier to enter the political system, he said. Many don’t have proper identification or have never voted, so a mobile app gives a much-needed push to the polls. Other experts say mobile phones fit the lifestyles of Hispanic voters more than they do those of the general population.
Democratic President Barack Obama’s campaign is ahead of Republican Mitt Romney’s in using the mobile platform. While both have mobile-optimized websites, the president also has launched the Latinos for Obama website optimized for mobile devices.
“The promise and power of digital is to reach people in the places where they already are, and get them using social tools to spread the word about the president to their own networks,” said Gabriela Domenzain, the Obama campaign’s director of Hispanic media.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/05/22/3624461/obama-romney-campaigns-target.html#storylink=cpy
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Free Latin House Mix to Download
Download this mix absolutely free (as long as you tell someone else to download it) . A live Latin Pop house Mix by Radio Latino's own Cache 22Pass it along!
DOWNLOAD LINK
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Sunday, May 20, 2012
Las Voces de Mexico Episode 2
A Medley of classic and new Mexican artists representing 60 years of rich Mexican tradition of Ranchera music. Listen to it at Las Voces de Mexico Episode 2Un popurrí de música ranchera por artistas clásicos y modernos representando más de 60 años de tradición mejicana. Las Voces de Mexico
Friday, May 18, 2012
What You’re Listening To | Enrique Chi, lead guitarist and vocalist for Making Movies - KansasCity.com
What You’re Listening To | Enrique Chi, lead guitarist and vocalist for Making Movies - KansasCity.com
Enrique Chi, the lead guitarist and vocalist for the Kansas City-based Making Movies, has long strived to integrate a Latin twist into his band’s music. The inspiration for the group’s name might have come from the English rock band Dire Straits’ album, but there’s no denying the Latin feel. Chi, who was born in Panama, recently sat down to detail his favorite 10 songs of the moment.
Enrique Chi, the lead guitarist and vocalist for the Kansas City-based Making Movies, has long strived to integrate a Latin twist into his band’s music. The inspiration for the group’s name might have come from the English rock band Dire Straits’ album, but there’s no denying the Latin feel. Chi, who was born in Panama, recently sat down to detail his favorite 10 songs of the moment.
The Gipsy Kings-Bamboleo Live from Kansas City
A live performance by the Gipsy Kings at the Midland Theater recorded and brought to you by radiolatinokc.org
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Appreciating Mexican author Carlos Fuentes - KansasCity.com
Whatever they may have thought of his politics, anyone lucky enough to have conversed with author Carlos Fuentes couldn't help but be taken by his patrician good looks and his love affair with language.
Appreciating Mexican author Carlos Fuentes - KansasCity.com
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Seasonal farm-worker visa program frustrates growers - KansasCity.com
"The problem with the program is that as long as we have an H-2A employee we basically have an opening on the farm for a U.S. worker," Ferguson said. "I have to advertise across the nation for U.S. workers. And sometimes we'll get some people who will come, they want to come out, they want to go to work. But they don't actually want to work."
Seasonal farm-worker visa program frustrates growers - KansasCity.com
Seasonal farm-worker visa program frustrates growers - KansasCity.com
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Las Voces de Mexico Episode 1
Un popurrí de música ranchera por artistas clásicos y modernos representando más de 60 años de tradición mejicana. Las Voces de Mexico
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Friday, May 4, 2012
PBS plans documentary series on Latino Americans - KansasCity.com
NEW YORK -- PBS said Wednesday it is preparing a six-hour documentary series on the history of Latinos in the United States, set to air in the fall of 2013.
English and Spanish-language versions are being produced for the project, which will air across three days. The supervising producer is Adriana Bosch, a Cuban-American who recently did a documentary for PBS on Latin music.
Bosch said she began meeting with officials at WETA, the PBS station in Washington, in 2008 about the project. They spent nearly three years putting funding together before starting with the filming.
It was in 2007 that Hispanic organizations criticized PBS and filmmaker Ken Burns for inadequately representing the contributions of Latinos in his 15-hour documentary on World War II.
"I thought this was a story whose time had come, had come a long time ago. I was surprised that it hadn't been done," said Bosch, who recalled similar series on the experiences of African-Americans, Jews and the Irish in the U.S.
A large part of the documentary will focus on the experiences of Mexican-Americans, but it will also include stories about Latinos from other countries who made contributions to the U.S., she said.
"Latinos have been part of American history since before there were 13 colonies," she said.
The sprawling project includes an advisory panel of academics from across the country and 15 other producers and assistants.
Bosch said she hoped both non-Latinos and Latinos seeking to learn about their heritage will tune in. The project will have a companion book, a bilingual website and a school curriculum tied to its findings. "We don't want this to end with the broadcast," she said.
English and Spanish-language versions are being produced for the project, which will air across three days. The supervising producer is Adriana Bosch, a Cuban-American who recently did a documentary for PBS on Latin music.
Bosch said she began meeting with officials at WETA, the PBS station in Washington, in 2008 about the project. They spent nearly three years putting funding together before starting with the filming.
It was in 2007 that Hispanic organizations criticized PBS and filmmaker Ken Burns for inadequately representing the contributions of Latinos in his 15-hour documentary on World War II.
"I thought this was a story whose time had come, had come a long time ago. I was surprised that it hadn't been done," said Bosch, who recalled similar series on the experiences of African-Americans, Jews and the Irish in the U.S.
A large part of the documentary will focus on the experiences of Mexican-Americans, but it will also include stories about Latinos from other countries who made contributions to the U.S., she said.
"Latinos have been part of American history since before there were 13 colonies," she said.
The sprawling project includes an advisory panel of academics from across the country and 15 other producers and assistants.
Bosch said she hoped both non-Latinos and Latinos seeking to learn about their heritage will tune in. The project will have a companion book, a bilingual website and a school curriculum tied to its findings. "We don't want this to end with the broadcast," she said.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Attendance records, not curfew, seen as anti-truancy tactic - KansasCity.com
Forget the daytime curfew.
Kansas City law officers and educators have agreed on another approach to bring the weight of the law on chronic truants and their parents.
An amended ordinance expected to go before the City Council next week makes a hammer out of school attendance records, instead of compelling police to find a child in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Authorities wouldn’t need to catch children out of class. Schools would be able to deliver attendance records to the city prosecutor’s office. Police would issue tickets and parents would be summoned to municipal court.
“We wanted to get away from going around and scooping up kids who may or may not belong in school,” City Prosecutor Lowell Gard said.
Everyone seems happy with the revised ordinance, which, when it was a day curfew proposal, had raised a storm of concerns over civil liberties, constitutional issues and the innocent movements of home-schooled children.
City Councilman Scott Wagner has worked for months trying to forge a deal on behalf of school districts — particularly Kansas City and Hickman Mills — that want effective legal authority to pressure parents whose children persistently miss school.
“After all this effort, I think we’ve got something that will work for everyone and still provide the teeth police and schools have asked for,” Wagner said. “…We can send a message to parents that we expect kids to be in school.”
Truancy concerns have mounted, particularly at Central, East and Northeast high schools in Kansas City where the district is looking at many ways to reverse alarming attendance rates of 75 to 80 percent.
A police sweep in the district’s Northeast neighborhood last fall rounded up 52 truant students.
Under the new proposal, the court could issue fines up to $500, but city officials said parents probably would initially get warnings to get their children in school. There would also be opportunities in many cases to attend parenting classes or counseling before receiving a fine.
Schools aren’t just relying on the ordinance, either. The Kansas City Public Schools is seeking grant funding to restore its truancy officer positions and is developing plans to open an alternative school this fall. It has marshaled volunteers to help run phone banks calling on families and making home visits where absences have become a concern.
In the past, the school district has occasionally teamed up with police to run truancy sweeps, rounding up students into a school building and then making a parent come to get them. But parents left with no citations or warnings. The next day, many students would simply skip school again.
The problem, Kansas City Superintendent Steve Green said, is that the district had no salient threat it could use when talking to parents and students caught in a sweep.
Kansas City law officers and educators have agreed on another approach to bring the weight of the law on chronic truants and their parents.
An amended ordinance expected to go before the City Council next week makes a hammer out of school attendance records, instead of compelling police to find a child in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Authorities wouldn’t need to catch children out of class. Schools would be able to deliver attendance records to the city prosecutor’s office. Police would issue tickets and parents would be summoned to municipal court.
“We wanted to get away from going around and scooping up kids who may or may not belong in school,” City Prosecutor Lowell Gard said.
Everyone seems happy with the revised ordinance, which, when it was a day curfew proposal, had raised a storm of concerns over civil liberties, constitutional issues and the innocent movements of home-schooled children.
City Councilman Scott Wagner has worked for months trying to forge a deal on behalf of school districts — particularly Kansas City and Hickman Mills — that want effective legal authority to pressure parents whose children persistently miss school.
“After all this effort, I think we’ve got something that will work for everyone and still provide the teeth police and schools have asked for,” Wagner said. “…We can send a message to parents that we expect kids to be in school.”
Truancy concerns have mounted, particularly at Central, East and Northeast high schools in Kansas City where the district is looking at many ways to reverse alarming attendance rates of 75 to 80 percent.
A police sweep in the district’s Northeast neighborhood last fall rounded up 52 truant students.
Under the new proposal, the court could issue fines up to $500, but city officials said parents probably would initially get warnings to get their children in school. There would also be opportunities in many cases to attend parenting classes or counseling before receiving a fine.
Schools aren’t just relying on the ordinance, either. The Kansas City Public Schools is seeking grant funding to restore its truancy officer positions and is developing plans to open an alternative school this fall. It has marshaled volunteers to help run phone banks calling on families and making home visits where absences have become a concern.
In the past, the school district has occasionally teamed up with police to run truancy sweeps, rounding up students into a school building and then making a parent come to get them. But parents left with no citations or warnings. The next day, many students would simply skip school again.
The problem, Kansas City Superintendent Steve Green said, is that the district had no salient threat it could use when talking to parents and students caught in a sweep.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Amid scandal, Wal-Mart works to clean up its image - KansasCity.com
A van covered by a mural sits parked outside a Walt-Mart Super Center in Mexico City, Saturday, April 21, 2012. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. hushed up a vast bribery campaign that top executives of its Mexican subsidiary carried out to build stores across Mexico, according to a published report by the New York Times. Wal-Mart is Mexico's largest private employer.
Back when Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was just a blip on the retail landscape, a vendor said he couldn’t even get Wal-Mart executives to accept a free cup of coffee.
So intent was the company to project pure business ethics.
But as the Arkansas-based chain ballooned from its 1962 founding by Sam Walton to become the world’s largest retailer and private-sector employer, perceptions of its business ethics changed in the court of public opinion.
Big size and big profits made it an especially big target. Accusation after accusation piled up: scores of lawsuits for violating wage and hour laws, charges that it was fouling the environment, and the potent attack that it was driving other U.S. businesses out of business.
Wal-Mart fought back. It countered the labor lawsuits and environmentalists. It mounted ad campaigns touting its delivery of low-priced merchandise to the masses.
To polish its ethical image, in the middle of the last decade it created a war room to respond to complaints. It pointed out its generous philanthropy and efforts to become more environmentally friendly and increase the promotion of women.
The past problems, executives said, represented a Wal-Mart of the past.
Last week, though, all those efforts suffered a huge blow. The New York Times published allegations that a crop of Wal-Mart executives bribed Mexican officials to pave the way for store sites. And then, The Times report said, beginning in 2005 top-level company executives covered up their knowledge of the payoffs.
Wal-Mart didn’t tell the U.S. Justice Department about the matter, reportedly involving $24 million in payouts, until last year — after it learned of the newspaper’s probe.
Current CEO Mike Duke headed the company’s international division in 2005, when Wal-Mart began its internal investigation. If the government pursues the case, legal authorities said Duke could face charges under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
A Wal-Mart corporate spokesman said last week that the case was being thoroughly investigated, steps were being taken to assure adherence to the law, and that, if true, the payments were “not a reflection of who we are or what we stand for.”
But, once again, critics had another bullet to aim at Wal-Mart, questioning how often its relentless pursuit of growth and profits tests ethical standards.
“What is the cost of their low prices? That’s what I ask myself every day,” said Mary Pat Tifft, a Walmart Supercenter employee who’s worked for the company for 24 years.
Tifft, who works in Wisconsin, said she decided to speak out as a member of OURWalmart, a group of employees and supporters who formed the Organization United for Respect at Walmart. She saw the Mexico allegations as a springboard to spotlight low pay and other employee issues.
Wal-Mart’s public relations team didn’t respond to The Kansas City Star’s request to clarify how the company sees its own public image.
Communication consultants agree that the bruise from the Mexico allegations might have been lighter if Wal-Mart had been upfront about a business practice gone awry.
“There is no way this one is going to go (away) quietly,” said James Haggerty, a lawyer, communications consultant and author of “In the Court of Public Opinion.”
In a blog post titled “In the Wal-Mart C-suite, it’s the PR battle that matters,” Haggerty wrote:
“Better to have gotten the story out on the right terms, in the right context, acknowledging mistakes and providing a complete description of the steps being taken to ensure it can never happen again.”
Others wonder whether public relations firestorms and employees’ grievances matter to the more than 200 million customers a week who pour into the company’s retail properties around the world.
Do the new allegations, added to long-standing complaints about sex discrimination, mandatory off-the-clock overtime and pricing demands that put vendors and competing retailers out of business really matter to those who make the cash registers ring?
“There are some people, like me, who would say Wal-Mart bit into an ethical jalapeño in Mexico,” said Al Norman, a company critic in Massachusetts who got energized 20 years ago to fight a proposed store in his community. “There are others who would say ethics aren’t on their shopping list. Their sense of ethics, of community, may be no bigger than their shopping cart.”
Norman is hardly an impartial judge. He’s already authored “The Case Against Wal-Mart.” His new book, “Occupy Walmart,” will be published this week. But he concedes Wal-Mart’s lure.
“I think there are a lot of different images of Wal-Mart,” Norman said. “A lot of people who shop at a Walmart couldn’t care less if they’re bribing Mexican officials to build their stores. And you can talk about Chinese sweatshops, but if you’re standing in a Walmart, you’re seeing folks whose most important thing is buying cheap, and they don’t care how it got to the shelf.”
And, don’t discount this: For investors, Wal-Mart stock has been a consistent winner.
Over the last five years, Wal-Mart shares outperformed the S&P 500 by 30 percent. From 2007 to 2011, Wal-Mart revenues rose 18 percent, profits jumped 27 percent, and earnings per share leaped 42 percent.
Free-enterprise darling
On its way to becoming the global retail leader — its most recent annual sales were three times the combined sales of Target, Sears, Kmart, J.C. Penney and Best Buy — Wal-Mart won accolades as the kind of Horatio Alger story that America loves.
From a small storefront in Rogers, Ark., to incorporation in 1969, to trading on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972, Wal-Mart became a free-enterprise darling. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, says Wal-Mart succeeds because it sells what people want at prices they want to pay.
Admirers especially tout the company’s fervor in fending off unions that would raise employee costs. And Sam Walton himself was on record fighting laws that would increase the minimum wage.
The company is famous for its never-ending drive to keep operating costs low, all the better to deliver low prices to customers.
As Wal-Mart grew in the 1970s and 1980s, most anti-Wal-Mart sentiment came from those who saw its heft overpowering small town retailers. Those who couldn’t compete on price or merchandise array shut their doors, and Main Streets withered.
The furor prompted academicians to study whether Wal-Mart was an economic savior and job creator or a killer of small towns.
But, as often is the case, opinions remained divided because the evidence wasn’t clear. A 2008 study by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis compared 40 small counties in its district that had Wal-Mart operation come to town between 1986 and 2003 with 49 similar-sized counties that had no Wal-Mart presence.
“One could call the results mostly a wash,” the report concluded. “Wal-Mart’s presence (or lack thereof) has little or no predictive power regarding the economic success or failure of a county.” Or on the poverty and employment status of residents.
Growth dominated Wal-Mart’s agenda in the 1990s. Led by CEO David Glass from 1988 until his retirement in 2000, the company during his tenure introduced its Supercenter and other concepts and opened its international division.
(Later in 2000, Glass paid $96 million to become the sole owner of the Kansas City Royals.)
How notable was Wal-Mart’s growth? It bumped Woolworth in 1997 as a component of the Dow Jones industrial average.
By about 2004, a year before Wal-Mart executives allegedly put an internal report about the payments in Mexico on the back burner, public sentiment against Wal-Mart had heightened.
Business and general-interest publications began running articles with such headlines as “People problems on every aisle.”
Charles Fishman, a reporter for Fast Company magazine, earned widespread attention for an expose on “The Wal-Mart you don’t know,” focusing on the low-cost pressure it put on vendors.
“To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas,” Fishman wrote.
Wal-Mart’s economic clout, he said, caused most business partners to keep mum or say only nice things about the company.
Mid-decade, a documentary called “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” got a lot of air time. It began with then-CEO Lee Scott sharing company highlights but mostly gave voice to critics of the company’s rapacious expansion, its environmental impact and its treatment of workers.
The film, in part, led Wal-Mart in late 2005 to create its public relations war room, the Action Alley.
Clearly, executives in the Bentonville, Ark., headquarters understood that Wal-Mart’s immensity made it a big target — for everything from Harvard Business School studies to not-in-my-backyard rallies to some of the nation’s biggest labor lawsuits.
About the same time, after 13 years advertising the same slogan, “Always low prices. Always,” Wal-Mart aimed its message a bit differently: “Save Money. Live Better.” Along with upgrading some store fixtures and merchandise, the new slogan aimed to emphasize more than just cost savings.
Meanwhile, Wal-Mart workers began rebelling.
A sex discrimination case filed by Wal-Mart women charged that they were paid less than men in comparable jobs and denied management promotions despite their greater numbers in the stores.
What could have been the largest class-action discrimination lawsuit in U.S. history slogged through the courts until the U.S. Supreme Court last year rejected the suit because the plaintiffs failed to prove that Wal-Mart had a nationwide policy that led to gender discrimination.
Wal-Mart’s lead lawyer fought the class action by arguing that allowing it to proceed would deprive the company of its right to contest the claims of each woman individually.
The case returned to a California district court, and separate lawsuits continue to be pursued.
Around the country, according to a count by Bloomberg News, Wal-Mart has been involved in more than 3,000 federal court lawsuits since 2009. More than 1 in 10 involved workers’ complaints of discrimination, bias or wage violations, such as being required to work off the clock.
Brad Seligman with the Impact Fund, a nonprofit organization of public-interest litigators, served as co-lead counsel for the women plaintiffs in the class action case.
When he read about Wal-Mart’s corporate response to the Mexico allegations, Seligman said, “I thought this latest mess — a great embarrassment to them — indicates the internal knee-jerk reaction at Wal-Mart often isn’t to address the problem but paper it over.
“What’s more important is that Wal-Mart has been trying to put out the message for years that ‘We’re not the old Wal-Mart. This is the new Wal-Mart.’ But it’s not. It’s the same old Wal-Mart.”
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Ariz. migrant case could lead to sweeping changes - KansasCity.com
The United States could see an official about-face in the coming months in how it confronts illegal immigration.
Supreme Court justices, weighing arguments over Arizona's tough immigration law, seemed to find little problem Wednesday with provisions that require police to check the legal status of people they stop for other reasons.
Over the last several years, states frustrated with the country's porous borders have rejected the long-held notion that Washington is responsible for confronting illegal immigration. They passed laws to enable local police to address the problem.
If the court upholds those parts of Arizona's law, the ruling would codify that type of local enforcement and open the door to such tactics in states with similar laws, such as Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah.
"I think you'll see more involvement by local police in immigration enforcement, an involvement that hadn't previously been seen," said Kevin Johnson, law school dean at the University of California-Davis and an immigration law expert.
A federal judge put parts of the Arizona law on hold shortly before they were to take effect in July 2010. Other states followed with similar legislation and - combined with other state immigration laws and an ailing economy - played a part in tens of thousands of illegal immigrants moving elsewhere.
"If you want to turn around this invasion, then (you should) do attrition through enforcement," said former state Sen. Russell Pearce, architect of the 2010 law and the driving force behind other Arizona immigration laws.
Arizona has argued it pays a disproportionate price for illegal immigration because of its 370-mile border with Mexico and its role as the busiest illegal entry point into the country.
The Obama administration said the law conflicts with a more nuanced federal immigration policy that seeks to balance national security, law enforcement, foreign policy, human rights and the rights of law-abiding citizens and immigrants.
During arguments over the law, liberal and conservative justices reacted skeptically to the administration's argument that the state exceeded its authority when it made the records check, and another provision allowing suspected illegal immigrants to be arrested without a warrant.
Civil rights groups say Arizona's and the other states' measures encourage racial profiling and ethnic stereotyping.
Immigrant rights advocates, who believed the courts would reject attempts by states to grab more law enforcement power, were not expecting the justices' response. They said a Supreme Court validation of the law would frighten immigrants further and cause Latinos who are in the country legally to be asked about their status.
"The crisis here in Arizona would only multiply," said Carlos Garcia, organizer of an immigration march that drew several hundred people in downtown Phoenix on Wednesday. Authorities said at least nine people were arrested for blocking a street and refusing to move.
"It would mean that anyone, as they are leaving their home - whether they are going to work, to church, wherever they are going - could be asked for their documents," he said.
The court's comments surprised state officials and had, thus far, lost all major court battles over the law.
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, whose office has helped defend the law, predicted the court will uphold the law because many of its provisions mirror existing federal laws. He said a year from now the state will see even less illegal immigration.
"You won't see anything that noticeable as far as law enforcement goes," Horne said. "But you will see less people sneaking across the border."
It was unclear what the court would do with other aspects of the law that have been put on hold by lower federal courts. The other blocked provisions make it a state crime for immigrants not to have immigration registration papers and for illegal immigrants to seek work or hold a job.
Peter Spiro, a Tempe University law professor who specializes in immigration law, predicted the court would uphold the police check of immigration status in Arizona's law, but said he wouldn't be surprised if the court threw out a provision making it a crime to be without immigration documents.
Such a ruling would let police question people about their immigration status if they have good reason to do so, but police would have to call federal authorities to see if they would want to pick up anyone found to be in the country illegally. If federal agents decline, officers would have to release the person, unless they were suspected of committing crimes, Spiro said.
If that happened, the law would be mostly symbolic, but would still carry some significance for immigrants, Spiro said. "It would make it clear that Arizona is unfriendly to undocumented aliens," Spiro said.
A decision in the case is expected in late June.
Supreme Court justices, weighing arguments over Arizona's tough immigration law, seemed to find little problem Wednesday with provisions that require police to check the legal status of people they stop for other reasons.
Over the last several years, states frustrated with the country's porous borders have rejected the long-held notion that Washington is responsible for confronting illegal immigration. They passed laws to enable local police to address the problem.
If the court upholds those parts of Arizona's law, the ruling would codify that type of local enforcement and open the door to such tactics in states with similar laws, such as Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah.
"I think you'll see more involvement by local police in immigration enforcement, an involvement that hadn't previously been seen," said Kevin Johnson, law school dean at the University of California-Davis and an immigration law expert.
A federal judge put parts of the Arizona law on hold shortly before they were to take effect in July 2010. Other states followed with similar legislation and - combined with other state immigration laws and an ailing economy - played a part in tens of thousands of illegal immigrants moving elsewhere.
"If you want to turn around this invasion, then (you should) do attrition through enforcement," said former state Sen. Russell Pearce, architect of the 2010 law and the driving force behind other Arizona immigration laws.
Arizona has argued it pays a disproportionate price for illegal immigration because of its 370-mile border with Mexico and its role as the busiest illegal entry point into the country.
The Obama administration said the law conflicts with a more nuanced federal immigration policy that seeks to balance national security, law enforcement, foreign policy, human rights and the rights of law-abiding citizens and immigrants.
During arguments over the law, liberal and conservative justices reacted skeptically to the administration's argument that the state exceeded its authority when it made the records check, and another provision allowing suspected illegal immigrants to be arrested without a warrant.
Civil rights groups say Arizona's and the other states' measures encourage racial profiling and ethnic stereotyping.
Immigrant rights advocates, who believed the courts would reject attempts by states to grab more law enforcement power, were not expecting the justices' response. They said a Supreme Court validation of the law would frighten immigrants further and cause Latinos who are in the country legally to be asked about their status.
"The crisis here in Arizona would only multiply," said Carlos Garcia, organizer of an immigration march that drew several hundred people in downtown Phoenix on Wednesday. Authorities said at least nine people were arrested for blocking a street and refusing to move.
"It would mean that anyone, as they are leaving their home - whether they are going to work, to church, wherever they are going - could be asked for their documents," he said.
The court's comments surprised state officials and had, thus far, lost all major court battles over the law.
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, whose office has helped defend the law, predicted the court will uphold the law because many of its provisions mirror existing federal laws. He said a year from now the state will see even less illegal immigration.
"You won't see anything that noticeable as far as law enforcement goes," Horne said. "But you will see less people sneaking across the border."
It was unclear what the court would do with other aspects of the law that have been put on hold by lower federal courts. The other blocked provisions make it a state crime for immigrants not to have immigration registration papers and for illegal immigrants to seek work or hold a job.
Peter Spiro, a Tempe University law professor who specializes in immigration law, predicted the court would uphold the police check of immigration status in Arizona's law, but said he wouldn't be surprised if the court threw out a provision making it a crime to be without immigration documents.
Such a ruling would let police question people about their immigration status if they have good reason to do so, but police would have to call federal authorities to see if they would want to pick up anyone found to be in the country illegally. If federal agents decline, officers would have to release the person, unless they were suspected of committing crimes, Spiro said.
If that happened, the law would be mostly symbolic, but would still carry some significance for immigrants, Spiro said. "It would make it clear that Arizona is unfriendly to undocumented aliens," Spiro said.
A decision in the case is expected in late June.
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