Segregation and Calvinism and blah blah blah ... Or: why I'm not optimistic going into the SOTU

So this upsets me:

AKRON, Ohio – A Summit County woman will spend 10 days in jail after she was found guilty in a school residency case that could set a precedent for Ohio school districts.

Judge Patricia Cosgrove also placed 40-year-old Kelly Williams-Bolar on two years of probation and ordered her to complete 80 hours of community service.

On Saturday, a jury found Williams-Bolar guilty on two counts of tampering with records. She was also facing one count of grand theft, but the judge declared a mistrial on that charge after the jury couldn’t reach a verdict.

She receives government assistance, works with disabled kids, and pursuing a teaching degree which would, presumably, better her family's situation. She falsified a record so that she could send her kids to a better school.

Ms. Williams-Bolar is poor and black, while the school she sent her kids to is in an affluent white neighborhood.

(And yes, I do understand that under the current terms of debate, pointing this out makes me a racist.  Maybe Kelley Williams-Bolar is a racist, too, come to think of it. Why didn't she want her kids in a black school?)

The judge pointed out that her fraud cost the school district in question $30,000, and he made an example out of her so that others would not be tempted to commit similar fraud.

What did it cost the county to prosecute this woman? In this era of "fiscal responsibility", what's the ROI?

But more importantly: who looks at this situation and thinks, right, it's obvious: she broke the law and needs to go to jail. How can one not look at this situation and think maybe there's something wrong with that law?

Anyway. We segregate. We do it by zip code or street map, but we really do it by income. In terms of policy, we have decided that the affluent deserve better breaks and their children deserve better educations. We've gone all Calvinist, which is convenient, because it absolves us as individuals and as a society of any responsibility.

So that's what I'm thinking about as I await the SOTU. That and the economic decline in Britain.  Let's see what the president has to offer.