School bus transportation in Los Angeles Unified School District, already pared to a minimum, is facing a $38 million budget deficit, to be balanced out by the end of the fiscal year.

One of the proposals (and I think it will be put into place) is to have all secondary students now riding school buses given MTA passes to ride public transportation. That will allow the school district to lay off a lot of school bus drivers and mothball part of the fleet, including garages and mechanics and field supervisors (classified employees, most African American, and increasingly so, Hispanic).

Classes, class size, teachers (certificated personnel) will not be affected.

This goes along with the current decline and attack upon the Post Office, now facing bankruptcy unless there is major reorganization (privitization?). Companies which made a huge profit thanks to the excellent service of the post office now turn their custom to other agencies--FedEx, UPS, the internet.

Irony: when FedEx or UPS has a package to be delivered somewhere not on their regular routes, it is given to the Post Office to deliver at their regular, modest, rates. So the Post Office is forced to assist in its own demise by its service mandate.

An echo of the death of the passenger trains (remember the sleeping car porters?), not so many decades ago. And now the attempt to end funding for Amtrak. (Both the trains and the post office are public utilities).

All three of these agencies are and have been major employers of African Americans, unionized, and such employment, along with pensions, has been the backbone of the African American middle class. The attack on these institutions by Congress has had a devastating effect on all employees, but disproportionally on African Americans.

Sounds like institutionalized racism to me.