“Part of an $11 million grant intended to provide business attire to 400 low-income job-seekers instead helped only two people, an audit of the city’s Department of Human Services has found.
The audit, conducted by the city’s auditor general for the period from July 2009 to September 2011, found the department failed to control the operations and finances of a boutique that was to provide the clothes.
The department did not safeguard grant funds or create an inventory for the clothing, the audit found.
[…]
“The DHS was only able to provide the auditors with two referral forms signed by two clients documenting that they received clothing from the boutique,” the audit said. “Eligible Detroiters are not being served with available clothing being stocked in the boutique.”

The department did not give a reason for not reaching the goal of providing 400 people with clothes.”

Detroit’s Department of Human Services must be a training ground for Department of Energy clean energy loan officers.

As rdbrewer pointed out at Ace of Spades, assuming the entire $11 million was earmarked for the job seeker “service center,” even if they met their goal of helping clothe 400 people in business attire, that would have still worked out to $27,500 per person. Where did they plan on taking these people to shop? Oscar de la Renta?

**Written by Doug Powers
Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

After Simon Burgess, 41 fell into the water when he suffered a seizure and no fewer than 25 members of the emergency services, including a press officer and a helicopter, descended on a 3½ft-deep model boating lake. Fire station watch manager Tony Nicholls arrived at the scene within five minutes but refused to try to rescue Mr Burgess because, he told the inquest, his crew’s ‘Level 1’ training only allowed them to go in the water up to their ankles. Even though they could all swim they waited for ‘specialists’ to arrive to retrieve his body. They had decided Mr Burgess must surely be dead because he had been in the water for ten minutes. Other rescue agencies believe people can survive submerged for much longer than ten minutes – some will still try resuscitation at 90 minutes. When a policeman decided to go in anyway, he was ordered not to. A paramedic was also told not to enter the water because he didn’t have the right ‘protective’ clothing and might be in breach of the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992.

The tragic incident made headlines around the world, held up as a shocking example of ludicrously risk-averse Britain. And it prompted a coroner to demand that fire, police and ambulance services improve training to prevent a repeat.

The incident happened despite  a previous reassurance from the Health and Safety Executive that firefighters would not face prosecution if they performed acts of heroism that break rules.

Mr Burgess could have been reached within two minutes of emergency crews arriving at the scene – as proved by our reporter who went into the lake and waded 25ft to the spot where his body had been floating.
Mr Burgess had been feeding swans from a plastic bag that blew into the lake. He went in to retrieve it and while he was in the water he had a fit and fell unconscious. Last week, Coroner David Horsley ruled his death was an accident on the balance of probabilities, but said there was a chance, ‘albeit a slim one’, he could have been saved had the emergency services intervened sooner.

Test.

Quality of Life (QOL) can be defined in many different ways. Most North Americans think of increased leisure time, early retirement, time to enjoy our hobbies, home ownership and the ability raise a family comfortably. Others want worry free living. That’s probably a bit of a stretch for most of us. This is likely the state of North American and OECD view of QOL. Since 1950 the lifestyle of Canadians and Americans has become increasingly rich and easy.

The rise of unionized labour, pension largesse, top notch medical coverage, cheap products from Asia and the ability of Canadians and Americans to borrow and accumulate debt in an unrestricted mode has meant that there are not many lifestyle amenities out of reach. It has indeed been a great 5 decade party akin to 50 years of Ferris Beuhler’s Day Off! QOL has been sustained by uninhibited borrowing.

However increased QOL is defined differently by citizens in the emerging world (Emergica). In Emergica there is more emphasis on income and jobs that provides enough to attain some of the accoutrements of the modern world. Savings rates are much higher in Emergica. Indians revere gold. You cannot be married without significant gold endowment in India. Gold is considered the way to create and store wealth in India. Chinese citizens are buying gold and silver at breakneck speed in units from single gram cards to kilogram bars. Gold is a quality of life asset in these countries.

Nevertheless, governments everywhere try to stimulate a growing QOL, however defined, in the culture of their country. One look at the domestic reaction to Greece’s forced “austerity” should convince one of this government’s priorities. Greece is once again feeling the heel of Europe’s jackboot. Remember the recent (1990 to 2007) “Flip that House” folly here in the U.S.? The government notion (with a big assist from Wall Street) that we should have a “chicken in every pot” housing policy was supported by both Republican and Democratic administrations. Housing was considered a quality of life asset. Subsequent to August 2007, much of what we have all experienced in North America, particularly the United States, has been fostered by this unsustainable orgy of low interest rates, easy loans, no down/ low down home ownership supported by cement mixer mortgage and investment bankers who rattled off mortgage bonds so quickly that they cannot now be unwound. Welcome to continued Quantitative Easing and “Too Big to Fail!

Across the globe, there are different views of a “good” quality of life. That’s part of the great strength of the democratic way of life in which humanity can strive to be better. My parents simply wanted to own their home free and clear, save for retirement and send their children to University.

But social scientists view lifestyle analytics differently in their efforts to measure and compare any country’s QOL over time (increasing happiness) and with other countries (relative happiness). Australian social scientists focus on immigration as a key driver of increased QOL.

For example here’s how the United Nations Human Development Agency views QOL i. The index is calculated using three sub-indices to construct an HDI index. They are per capita income, health (life expectancy) and education (years of schooling).

The following diagram shows the increase in this index as estimated by the United Nations Human Development Program for a group of OECD countries.    Norway sports the highest index value, the U.S. ranks 4th and Canada 6th according to the study.

These time series and graphs imply that the quality of life as measured by the HDI index has increased for these countries over the past 30 years. In 1980 The U.S. sported the second highest index while Canada ranked third (in the world). They now rank 4th and 6th respectively. I think this is what Mark Faber was getting at in his research results that the QOL of the West was falling and likely to fall further relative to other countries.

….read pages – 3- 6 HERE

The teacher told the principal, the principal called Child and Family Services and they called police. The cops met Sansone at the school when he tried to pick up three of his children, told him he was charged with possession of a fire arm, handcuffed him and put him in one of the several squad cars waiting outside.

While Sansone was being strip-searched at the police station: told to disrobe, lift his testicles and bend over, his wife was home with their 15 month old daughter. “They came to my house, told my wife that I had been charged with possession of firearms, that she would have to come with them, and that Sundae (their infant daughter) would have to go with the social worker,” said Sansone.

Ezra Levant rips the Police and Teachers apart, noting amongst the many mistakes in this case, the police did all of the searching without a warrant.