This week our Michigan Radio colleague Kyle Norris will be starting a series on homelessness.  So, when I came across this post on the stellar Sociological Images blog I thought it was worth a mention.

It explores a study that finds our brains, not just our emotions, react to the homeless with "disgust." This happens in part because we see them as very different from ourselves. Then, with the help of our brains we build up our tolerance for seeing suffering among these people. We rarely feel empathy for them.

I'll be exploring issues of empathy and children in a few weeks with the help of one of our storytelling sources. This study  is an an interesting introduction.

I know you don't want to read this any more than I want to write it.

The point of State of Opportunity is to talk about how we can improve life for our most vulnerable children.  We talk about education, we talk about health, we talk about public policy. We have not yet talked much about violence. I wish we didn't have to. 

What happened in Newtown is incomprehensible. We are left only with grief. 

And yet we know that what happened in Newtown is not rare. Mass shootings, we hear about all the time. Children victimized by violence, we try not to think about. 

But the sad reality is children are murdered every day in America. Consider these statistics, compiled from reports by the CDC and the Congressional Research Service: 

Things are moving at lightening speed over in Lansing. I'm no lame duck expert, but this has got to be one of the busiest lame duck legislatures we've seen in a long time.

Sure, sure, we all know about the Right to Work bill, which Governor Rick Snyder just signed into law. But what else is happening in Lansing? Michigan Radio's Kate Wells has this handy dandy list of bills that are moving through the legislature as we speak.

Governor Rick Snyder put Michigan’s educators on notice last year when he described the state’s education system as broken and outdated. He said it’s time for a new type of public education system, one that allows K-12 students more school choice.

But does it mean choice for all students?  To find out, we called up Richard McLellan. A little background on McLellan: he's a lawyer; he runs the nonprofit Oxford Foundation; he was the founder of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank.

McLellan was tasked by Governor Snyder to come up with a new way to educate Michigan kids, one that included "an anytime, anyplace, any pace, anyway model of public education where students would have more access to educational resources."

McLellan spent six months talking to education stakeholders before he wrote the 300 page draft proposal for the "Michigan Education Finance Act," which would replace the School Aid Act of 1979. Some supporters say the proposal is packed with school choice, critics say the proposal will result in a complete dismantling of public education. For the sake of this story, we'll call it the Oxford Proposal.

Click here to read a draft of the proposal.

Yes, I too am incredibly sick of hearing about the fiscal cliff. The fact that negotiations don't seem to be going anywhere and that we're all just waiting for Congress to do something does make it hard to care.

But then I tell myself that if we do go over the cliff it could be the single biggest federal government action affecting low-income families since welfare reform, and I have to care.

So if it's going down what should you know? One resource is the Urban Institutes' Fiscal Cliff Toolkit. It's a guide that in plain language explains some of the cuts to entitlement programs being talked about. The  Urban Institute comes from left-of-center, so for those of you looking for another perspective the Heritage Foundation has put together something similar.  

Most of the talk now is about Medicare and Social Security, because those are the big ticket items. But, as negotiations move forward, listen closely for talk about some things that could really impact low income kids. There is talk of inclusion of the Farm Bill and food stamp spending. There is also chatter about Medicaid moving to a block grant program administered by the states. In the past, turning federal programs into state run block grant programs has led to more restrictions and fewer people getting benefits.

Lately it seems there have been a lot of documentaries on poverty. Or maybe I'm just finally paying attention.

FRONTLINE's Poor Kids follows three families who live between Iowa and Illinois. The majority of the documentary is told from a child's perspective.