Increase Taxes: President Bush should seek to increase -- not cut -- the taxes of the wealthy. After President Bill Clinton's 1993 budget raised tax rates, the nation experienced record economic prosperity.
Sunday, May 28, 2017
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Social work students helping homeless in hands-on way
By Tom Siebert
Assistant Director for Community Relations
Public Action to Deliver Shelter (PADS) of Kendall County
Brittani Dahlman recently received a bachelor's degree in social work from Aurora University. She also earned an eclectic education in humanity. That's because Ms. Dahlman, 22, served as an intern during this past school year for Public Action to Deliver Shelter (PADS) of Kendall County.
"I got to work with a wide variety of the human population--people with addictions, mental illness, a veteran, the younger, the older," she said. "It was very exciting."
Ms. Dahlman and fellow intern Andrea Spanier teamed up to develop PADS' new Guest Assistance Program. The GAP enabled the nonprofit, homeless assistance organization to move beyond its basic mission of providing food and shelter to also assisting with employment, permanent housing, and social services.
"Andrea and Brittani pioneered this essential program this year," said Anne Engelhardt, executive director of Kendall County PADS. "They applied their learning, experience, and skills to building relationships with the guests and were able to offer direction and critical support."
For the past seven years, Kendall County PADS has been providing nourishing meals, overnight stays, and kind hospitality to the local homeless from mid-October through mid-April at seven area churches. This was the first shelter season during which PADS partnered with Aurora University's prestigious School of Social Work.
The two interns augmented the assistance provided by a social worker from the Kendall County Health Department, who has been helping PADS guests for several years, going to the Thursday evening shelter site and connecting them to the department's social services.
Ms. Dahlman focused primarily on the employment needs of her clients, helping them write résumés and cover letters. She is particularly proud of one guest whom she helped land a job at the Caterpillar plant in Montgomery, where he was able to save enough money to secure stable housing.
"He just said, 'I'm going to pull myself up by the bootstraps,'" she recounted. "And once he got the job, he started asking to work extra hours and shifts."
Ms. Spanier, 40, had a successful career in marketing and advertising until she developed health problems that stemmed from giving birth to her daughter, now eight years' old. "When I was sick, I relied a lot on my mom, my step-mom, and my husband," she recalled.
Her recovery experience inspired her to go back to college and major in social work at Aurora University, where she plans to earn her master's degree next year. Her PADS internship entailed volunteering during the school year on Tuesday nights at Harvest New Beginnings church in Oswego and on Saturday evenings at St. Luke's Lutheran Church in Boulder Hill.
She assisted PADS guests mostly with medical issues such as eye, dental, and mental healthcare. And she successfully steered a female guest with an alcohol problem into a 12-step program.
Kendall County PADS is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization funded by donations received through grants, gifts, private donors, organizations, and businesses. Those who wish to donate or volunteer may call (630) 553-5073 or visit the website kendallcountypads.org.
Ms. Dahlman volunteered on Monday nights at Yorkville Congregational United Church of Christ and on Wednesday evenings at the United Methodist Church of Plano.
She begins working on her master's degree at Aurora University next month and plans to continue volunteering at PADS in the fall. The soon-to-be graduate student hopes she won't encounter any of her previous clients because that would mean that they had not obtained permanent housing. "But if I do see any of them, I will be happy to further help them in any way that I can."
Ms. Spanier intends to specialize in gerontology because she wants to help the elderly, the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population. She also plans to volunteer her services again at PADS this fall, describing the work as its own reward. "The payment of social work is when that one person succeeds and you know that you've been a part of it."
Assistant Director for Community Relations
Public Action to Deliver Shelter (PADS) of Kendall County
Brittani Dahlman recently received a bachelor's degree in social work from Aurora University. She also earned an eclectic education in humanity. That's because Ms. Dahlman, 22, served as an intern during this past school year for Public Action to Deliver Shelter (PADS) of Kendall County.
"I got to work with a wide variety of the human population--people with addictions, mental illness, a veteran, the younger, the older," she said. "It was very exciting."
Ms. Dahlman and fellow intern Andrea Spanier teamed up to develop PADS' new Guest Assistance Program. The GAP enabled the nonprofit, homeless assistance organization to move beyond its basic mission of providing food and shelter to also assisting with employment, permanent housing, and social services.
"Andrea and Brittani pioneered this essential program this year," said Anne Engelhardt, executive director of Kendall County PADS. "They applied their learning, experience, and skills to building relationships with the guests and were able to offer direction and critical support."
For the past seven years, Kendall County PADS has been providing nourishing meals, overnight stays, and kind hospitality to the local homeless from mid-October through mid-April at seven area churches. This was the first shelter season during which PADS partnered with Aurora University's prestigious School of Social Work.
The two interns augmented the assistance provided by a social worker from the Kendall County Health Department, who has been helping PADS guests for several years, going to the Thursday evening shelter site and connecting them to the department's social services.
Ms. Dahlman focused primarily on the employment needs of her clients, helping them write résumés and cover letters. She is particularly proud of one guest whom she helped land a job at the Caterpillar plant in Montgomery, where he was able to save enough money to secure stable housing.
"He just said, 'I'm going to pull myself up by the bootstraps,'" she recounted. "And once he got the job, he started asking to work extra hours and shifts."
Ms. Spanier, 40, had a successful career in marketing and advertising until she developed health problems that stemmed from giving birth to her daughter, now eight years' old. "When I was sick, I relied a lot on my mom, my step-mom, and my husband," she recalled.
Her recovery experience inspired her to go back to college and major in social work at Aurora University, where she plans to earn her master's degree next year. Her PADS internship entailed volunteering during the school year on Tuesday nights at Harvest New Beginnings church in Oswego and on Saturday evenings at St. Luke's Lutheran Church in Boulder Hill.
She assisted PADS guests mostly with medical issues such as eye, dental, and mental healthcare. And she successfully steered a female guest with an alcohol problem into a 12-step program.
Kendall County PADS is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization funded by donations received through grants, gifts, private donors, organizations, and businesses. Those who wish to donate or volunteer may call (630) 553-5073 or visit the website kendallcountypads.org.
Ms. Dahlman volunteered on Monday nights at Yorkville Congregational United Church of Christ and on Wednesday evenings at the United Methodist Church of Plano.
She begins working on her master's degree at Aurora University next month and plans to continue volunteering at PADS in the fall. The soon-to-be graduate student hopes she won't encounter any of her previous clients because that would mean that they had not obtained permanent housing. "But if I do see any of them, I will be happy to further help them in any way that I can."
Ms. Spanier intends to specialize in gerontology because she wants to help the elderly, the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population. She also plans to volunteer her services again at PADS this fall, describing the work as its own reward. "The payment of social work is when that one person succeeds and you know that you've been a part of it."
Sunday, May 7, 2017
When A Kook Has Influence
When A Kook Has Influence: LYNDON LAROUCHE AND THE NEW AMERICAN FASCISM. By Dennis King. Doubleday. $19.95. 415 pages.
Second Assassination
Second Assassination: A WOMAN NAMED JACKIE. By C. David Heymann. $21.95. Lyle Stuart. 631 pages.
TOM SIEBERT
Staff Writer
SUN-SENTINEL
The biggest-selling book of 1989 is a malicious melange of unsubstantiated gossip and mean-spirited rumors -- all apparently aimed at snuffing out forever the flame of America's Camelot and any glamorous notions of its fairy- tale first lady.
The author, C. David Heymann, bills his massive book as an "intimate biography" of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.
But what "A Woman Named Jackie" really represents is the latest -- and most salacious -- literary assassination of the nation's 35th president.
Granted, Jack Kennedy was no Jack Kennedy -- at least not in the misty-eyed mythical sense. And the late president, who was a master of self-mockery, probably would be the first one to dismiss his legendary status in American politics.
But are we really to believe Heymann when he informs us that just minutes before his critical first debate with then-Vice President Richard Nixon in 1960, JFK was cavorting with a call girl at Chicago's Palmer House hotel?
Or, as Heymann alleges, that on the night of his inauguration, JFK sent his wife upstairs to bed alone so that he could engage in a celebratory menage a trois with two unnamed starlets?
Or, in the book's most serious charge, that just before his 1961 meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, JFK was shot up with amphetamines by a mysterious "Dr. Feelgood" who routinely administered drugs to the first couple so they could keep up their hectic White House schedule?
It should be pointed out that virtually all of the explosive, headline-making material in this disturbing book comes from sources who are conveniently dead.
Thus, we have the president's brother-in-law, the late Peter Lawford, relating how the late Marilyn Monroe got Jackie to agree to give up JFK on the condition that the actress take over her role as first lady.
And in a particularly ghoulish scene in the book, Jackie describes for the late historian Theodore White how she held her husband's head together "so more brains wouldn't spill out" as he lay dying in the blood-splattered presidential limousine.
Then there is the late author Truman Capote telling us about Jackie's "shop 'til you drop" spending sprees during which she "seemed in a daze, hypnotized."
Later on, Jackie's late second husband, Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, confesses to the late celebrity attorney Roy Cohn that it was he who hired the scuba-diving paparazzi who snapped the famous photos of Jackie skinny-dipping off the island of Skorpios.
When he is not quoting Sources From The Grave, Heymann is liberally appropriating entire passages from other books about the Kennedys, including such discredited works as Kitty Kelley's "Jackie Oh!" and Ralph G. Martin's "A Hero for Our Times."
It also should be noted that some of Heymann's living sources -- such as one- time JFK aide Lawrence O'Brien, syndicated columnist Jack Anderson and New York literary agent Sarah Lazin -- have publicly stated that they were misquoted in the book.
And finally, at the end of his exhausting "biography," Heymann concedes in a bizarre bit of candor that "we may never truly know" what Jackie is really like.
Perhaps not, but we sure have learned an awful lot about the man who stands to make millions off her fame and misfortune.
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