That’s just what some outraged Christian supporters of the Democratic nominee are claiming John McCain’s campaign did in an ad called “The One” that was recently released online. The Republican nominee’s advisers brush off the charges, arguing that the spot was meant to be a “creative” and “humorous” way of poking fun at Obama’s popularity by painting him as a self-appointed messiah. But even this innocuous interpretation of the ad — which includes images of Charlton Heston as Moses and culled clips that make Obama sound truly egomaniacal — taps into a conversation that has been gaining urgency on Christian radio and political blogs and in widely circulated e-mail messages that accuse Obama of being the Antichrist.

The ad was the creation of Fred Davis, one of McCain’s top media gurus as well as a close friend of former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed and the nephew of conservative Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe. It first caught the attention of Democrats familiar with the Left Behind series, a fictionalized account of the end-time that debuted in the 1990s and has sold nearly 70 million books worldwide. “The language in there is so similar to the language in the Left Behind books,” says Tony Campolo, a leading progressive Evangelical speaker and author.

As the ad begins, the words “It should be known that in 2008 the world shall be blessed. They will call him The One” flash across the screen. The Antichrist of the Left Behind books is a charismatic young political leader named Nicolae Carpathia who founds the One World religion (slogan: “We Are God”) and promises to heal the world after a time of deep division. One of several Obama clips in the ad features the Senator saying, “A nation healed, a world repaired. We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for.”

The visual images in the ad, which Davis says has been viewed even more than McCain’s “Celeb” ad linking Obama to the likes of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, also seem to evoke the cover art of several Left Behind books. But they’re not the cartoonish images of clouds parting and shining light upon Obama that might be expected in an ad spoofing him as a messiah. Instead, the screen displays a sinister orange light surrounded by darkness and later the faint image of a staircase leading up to heaven.

Perhaps the most puzzling scene in the ad is an altered segment from The 10 Commandments that appears near the end. A Moses-playing Charlton Heston parts the animated waters of the Red Sea, out of which rises the quasi-presidential seal the Obama campaign used for a brief time earlier this summer before being mocked into retiring it. The seal, which features an eagle with wings spread, is not recognizable like the campaign’s red-white-and-blue “O” logo. That confused Democratic consultant Eric Sapp until he went to his Bible and remembered that in the apocalyptic Book of Daniel, the Antichrist is described as rising from the sea as a creature with wings like an eagle.

Sapp knows that the phrasing and images could just be dismissed as a peculiar coincidence. After all, it was Oprah Winfrey who told an Iowa crowd that Obama was “the one!” But, he insists, “the frequency of these images and references don’t make any sense unless you’re trying to send the message that Obama could be the Antichrist.” Mara Vanderslice, another Democratic consultant, who handled religious outreach for the 2004 Kerry campaign, agrees. “If they wanted to be funny, if they really wanted to play up the idea that Obama thinks he’s the Second Coming, there were better ways to do it,” she says. “Why use these awkward lines like, ‘And the world will receive his blessings’?”

Two months ago, Vanderslice founded a Democratic PAC called the Matthew 25 Network and soon noticed that the negative e-mails she received from conservative Christians fell into two general topical categories: abortion, and the assertion that Obama is the Antichrist. The cataloging of similarities Obama shares with the Antichrist began nearly two years ago. But it picked up steam in February 2008 after he racked up a string of impressive primary victories. A Google search for “Obama” and “Antichrist” turns up more than 700,000 hits, including at least one blog dedicated solely to the topic. A more obscure search for “Obama” and “Nicolae Carpathia” yields a surprising 200,000 references.

It’s not hard to see how some Obama haters might be tempted to make the comparison. In the Left Behind books, Carpathia is a junior Senator who speaks several languages, is beloved by people around the world and fawned over by a press corps that cannot see his evil nature, and rises to absurd prominence after delivering just one major speech. Hmmh. But serious Antichrist theorists don’t stop there. Everything from Obama’s left-handedness to his positive rhetoric to his appearance on the cover of this magazine has been cited as evidence of his true identity. One chain e-mail claims that the Antichrist was prophesied to be “A man in his 40s of MUSLIM descent,” which would indeed sound ominous if not for the fact that the Book of Revelation was written at least 400 years before the birth of Islam.

The speculation reached a fever pitch after Obama’s European trip and the Berlin speech in which he called for global unity. Conservative Christian author Hal Lindsey declared in an essay on WorldNetDaily, “Obama is correct in saying that the world is ready for someone like him — a messiah-like figure, charismatic and glib … The Bible calls that leader the Antichrist. And it seems apparent that the world is now ready to make his acquaintance.” The conservative website RedState.com now sells mugs and T shirts that sport a large “O” with horns and the words “The Anti-Christ” underneath.

Even if a fraction of the Internet-using public engages in outrageous Antichrist speculation, feeding those extreme beliefs wouldn’t seem to be an obvious political strategy. But McCain advisers are aware that one of the goals of Democratic outreach to Evangelicals has been to simply neutralize their opposition. “You just have to take the edge off,” says Michigan Democratic Party chair Mark Brewer, explaining why he spent much of a 2006 meeting with conservative pastors around his state. “Now that they’ve met me, they can see I don’t have two horns and a tail.”

A new TIME poll finds that the most conservative Evangelicals are the least enthusiastic about McCain’s candidacy. Convincing them that Obama does have two horns and a tail might be the best way of getting them to vote. That’s what worries Campolo, who also sits on the Democratic Party’s platform committee. “Those books have created a subliminal language, and I think judgments will be made unconsciously about Barack Obama,” he says. “It scares the daylights out of me.”
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It also promises to tear apart the social fabric. What kind of society do we live in if people can look up criminal histories on each other without restriction, then rush to judgment based on incomplete and often confusing information? The story deals with that thorny question.

One perspective that did not make it into the piece came from data aggregator ChoicePoint. One of its divisions has the same records as CriminalSearches.com, but chooses to make them available only to companies and not the general public. I asked the company why.

Carol DiBattiste, ChoicePoint’s general counsel and chief privacy officer, said that the use of criminal records by business customers such as employers and landlords is regulated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act and various state laws. Among other provisions, these laws require that companies using this data notify people whose backgrounds are being searched and, if they take adverse action because of what they find, give them an opportunity to dispute the accuracy of the data. But people can easily skirt these restrictions on sites like CriminalSearches.com.

“It is our policy not to make this information available to the general public,” Ms. DiBattiste said in her e-mail. “Even in cases where a job, housing, or other similar decision is not being made about the consumer on the basis of criminal history information, this information still can have a potentially adverse impact on the consumer. There also are important issues involving the accuracy of any information provided, the sources of the information, the completeness of the information, and associating a particular criminal history record with the correct individual. A casual visitor to a Web site researching criminal history information online may not recognize the potential limitations of the information being provided.”

Ms. DiBattiste pointed out that the Federal Trade Commission has created a set of Fair Information Principles to provide a privacy framework for the increasing availability of personal records on the Web.The principles spell out such protections as giving consumers advance notice of a search and ways to redress any problems.

“If and when there is a scenario in which a consumer is unaware that their information is being accessed or used and for what purpose,” Ms. DiBattiste wrote, indirectly digging at sites like CriminalSearches.com, “transparency diminishes and the protections set forth in the Fair Information Principles disappear.”

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A viewer is likely to come away with memories not of statistics but of images — the real-life anecdotes and vignettes that supplement numbers with faces and experiences. In Part 1, airing tonight, among the most poignant stories is that of a 60-year-old woman, whom we first meet apologizing for her tears as she languishes in a Harlem hospital bed, correspondent Soledad O’Brien at her side.

Later, after the woman is released from the hospital and back in the poor neighborhood she calls home, we follow her as she embarks on a visit to the supermarket — the nearest one being 20 blocks away at 110th and Broadway. For the woman, O’Brien says, that means an hour’s trip via public transportation just to buy a tomato. It’s no way to live, but she’s living it.

Clearly the result of exhaustive research and reportage, “The Black Woman & Family” (airing tonight) and “The Black Man” (tomorrow night) are rife with evidence that for many African Americans, the American dream is still far beyond arm’s reach. For some, it’s more daydream than dream, so distant is its promise and realization.

But the report is not a lament. Forward steps are acknowledged and documented. Signs of progress are duly noted. Instances of racial conflict and surviving stereotypes are countered with stories of harmony and stereotypes smashed.

And one special promise — though largely unspoken — informs both two-hour broadcasts: the idea that America has arrived at a momentous crossroads spearheaded by the candidacy of Barack Obama, potentially the first black president of the United States. It would be folly to prophesy sweeping reform overnight, and yet great expectations are irresistible. On the other hand, there are African Americans who think an Obama presidency could actually hurt their cause, lulling the country into imagining greater progress on defeating racism than has occurred.

In the program, watershed moments of the past are also evoked — the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., 45 years since his “I Had a Dream” speech and the 50th anniversary last year of the turbulent integration of Little Rock Central High School. O’Brien talks to some of those who were there.

In one of the program’s most disheartening moments, a man who was in high school at the time remembers Southern white children laughing and applauding the news of King’s death. At least such memories allow us the luxury of feeling we’ve come a long way — and the hope that conditions will never deteriorate to such an abhorrent level again. “Never,” of course, is a high-risk word.

O’Brien, an engagingly relaxed yet persistent interviewer, makes it plain from the outset that she is not looking for easy answers or politically correct platitudes. She reports the encouraging and the discouraging with dispassionate impartiality.

If I have often criticized Mr. Jackson, I have also, reservedly, admired him. He is a late 20th century outcropping of a profoundly American archetype: the self-invented man who comes from nothing and, out of sheer force of personality, imposes himself on the American consciousness. If he never reached the greatness to which he aspired, he nevertheless did honor to the enduring American tradition of bold and unapologetic opportunism.

But now — not looking old so much as a bit lost within the new Obama aura — it is clear that Jesse Jackson has come to a kind of dénouement. Some force that once buoyed him up now seems spent.

Mr. Jackson was always a challenger. He confronted American institutions (especially wealthy corporations) with the shame of America’s racist past and demanded redress. He could have taken up the mantle of the early Martin Luther King (he famously smeared himself with the great man’s blood after King was shot), and argued for equality out of a faith in the imagination and drive of his own people. Instead — and tragically — he and the entire civil rights establishment pursued equality through the manipulation of white guilt.

Their faith was in the easy moral leverage over white America that the civil rights victories of the 1960s had suddenly bestowed on them. So Mr. Jackson and his generation of black leaders made keeping whites “on the hook” the most sacred article of the post-’60s black identity.

They ushered in an extortionist era of civil rights, in which they said to American institutions: Your shame must now become our advantage. To argue differently — that black development, for example, might be a more enduring road to black equality — took whites “off the hook” and was therefore an unpardonable heresy. For this generation, an Uncle Tom was not a black who betrayed his race; it was a black who betrayed the group’s bounty of moral leverage over whites. And now comes Mr. Obama, who became the first viable black presidential candidate precisely by giving up his moral leverage over whites.

Mr. Obama’s great political ingenuity was very simple: to trade moral leverage for gratitude. Give up moral leverage over whites, refuse to shame them with America’s racist past, and the gratitude they show you will constitute a new form of black power. They will love you for the faith you show in them.

So it is not hard to see why Mr. Jackson might have experienced Mr. Obama’s emergence as something of a stiletto in the heart. Mr. Obama is a white “race card” — moral leverage that whites can use against the moral leverage black leaders have wielded against them for decades. He is the nullification of Jesse Jackson — the anti-Jackson.

And Mr. Obama is so successful at winning gratitude from whites precisely because Mr. Jackson was so successful at inflaming and exploiting white guilt. Mr. Jackson must now see his own oblivion in the very features of Mr. Obama’s face. Thus the on-camera threat of castration, followed by the little jab of his fist as if to deliver a stiletto of his own.

And then Mr. Obama took it further by going to the NAACP with a message of black responsibility — this after his speech on the need for black fathers to take responsibility for the children they sire. “Talking down to black people,” Mr. Jackson mumbled.

Normally, “black responsibility” is a forbidden phrase for a black leader — not because blacks reject responsibility, but because even the idea of black responsibility weakens moral leverage over whites. When Mr. Obama uses this language, whites of course are thankful. Black leaders seethe.

Nevertheless, Mr. Obama’s sacrifice of black leverage has given him a chance to actually become the president. He has captured the devotion of millions of whites in ways that black leveragers never could. And the great masses of blacks — blacks outside today’s sclerotic black leadership — see this very clearly. Until Mr. Obama, any black with a message of black responsibility would be called a “black conservative” and thereby marginalized. After Obama’s NAACP speech, blacks flooded into the hotel lobby thanking him for “reminding” them of their responsibility.

Thomas Sowell, among many others, has articulated the power of individual responsibility as an antidote to black poverty for over 40 years. Black thinkers as far back as Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington have done the same. Why then, all of a sudden, are blacks willing to openly embrace this truth — and in the full knowledge that it will weaken their leverage with whites?

I think the answer is that Mr. Obama potentially offers them something far more profound than mere moral leverage. If only symbolically, he offers nothing less than an end to black inferiority. This has been an insidious spiritual torment for blacks because reality itself keeps mockingly proving the original lie. Barack Obama in the Oval Office — a black man governing a largely white nation — would offer blacks an undreamed-of spiritual solace far more meaningful than the petty self-importance to be gained from moral leverage.

But white Americans have also been tormented by their stigmatization as moral inferiors, as racists. An Obama presidency would give them considerable moral leverage against this stigma.

So it has to be acknowledged that, on the level of cultural and historical symbolism, an Obama presidency might nudge the culture forward a bit — presuming of course that he would be at least a competent president. (A less-than-competent black president would likely be a step backwards.) It would be a good thing were blacks to be more open to the power of individual responsibility. And it would surely help us all if whites were less cowed by the political correctness on black issues that protects their racial innocence at the expense of the very principles that made America great. We Americans are hungry for such a cultural shift.

This, no doubt, is what Barack Obama means by “change.” He promises to reconfigure our exhausted cultural arrangement.

But here lies his essential contradiction: His campaign is more cultural than political. He sells himself more as a cultural breakthrough than as a candidate for office. To be a projection screen for the cultural aspirations of both blacks and whites one must be an invisible man politically. Real world politics, in their mundanity, interrupt cultural projections. And so Mr. Obama’s political invisibility — a charm that can only derive from a lack of deep political convictions — may well serve his cultural appeal, but it also makes him something of a political mess.

Already he has flip-flopped on campaign financing, wire-tapping, gun control, faith-based initiatives, and the terms of withdrawal from Iraq. Those enamored of his cultural potential may say these reversals are an indication of thoughtfulness, or even open-mindedness. But could it be that this is a man who trusted so much in his cultural appeal that the struggles of principle and conscience never seemed quite real to him? His flip-flops belie an almost existential callowness toward principle, as if the very idea of permanent truth is passé, a form of bad taste.

John McCain is simply a man of considerable character, poor guy. He is utterly bereft of cultural cachet. Against an animating message of cultural “change,” he is retrogression itself. Worse, Mr. Obama’s trick is to take politics off the table by moving so politically close to his opponent that only culture is left to separate them. And, unencumbered as he is by deep attachment to principle, he can be both far-left and center-right. He can steal much of Mr. McCain’s territory.

Mr. Obama has already won a cultural mandate to the American presidency. And politically, he is now essentially in a contest with himself. His challenge is not Mr. McCain; it is the establishment of his own patriotism, trustworthiness and gravitas. He has to channel a little Colin Powell, and he no doubt hopes his trip to the Middle East and Europe will reflect him back to America with something of Mr. Powell’s stature. He wants even Middle America to feel comfortable as the mantle they bestow on him settles upon his shoulders.
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The remarks came Sunday as Jackson was talking to a fellow interviewee, UnitedHealth Group executive Dr. Reed V. Tuckson. An open microphone picked up Jackson whispering, “See, Barack’s been talking down to black people … I want to cut his nuts off.”

Jackson told CNN’s “Situation Room” that he didn’t realize the microphone was on.

“It was very private,” Jackson said, adding that if “any hurt or harm has been caused to his campaign, I apologize.”

An Obama campaign spokesman, Bill Burton, said that the senator from Illinois “of course accepts Rev. Jackson’s apology.” Watch Jackson whisper comments about Obama »

Jackson’s son, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois — co-chair of Obama’s presidential campaign — publicly blasted his father’s comments Wednesday.

“I’m deeply outraged and disappointed in Rev. Jackson’s reckless statements about Sen. Barack Obama,” the younger Jackson said. “His divisive and demeaning comments about the presumptive Democratic nominee — and I believe the next president of the United States — contradict his inspiring and courageous career.”

Jackson Jr. added that he’ll “always love” his father. But, he said, “I thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric.”

The elder Jackson repeated his apology in a news conference in Chicago a couple of hours before Fox News aired Sunday’s remarks. He said he wanted to address the issue publicly before the cable network aired the comment, because “I know that they will further violate the context of it.”

Earlier, Jackson told CNN he felt “very distressed because I’m supportive of this campaign and with the senator.” Watch more of Jackson’s apology on CNN »

“I was in a conversation with a fellow guest on Sunday. He asked about Barack’s speeches lately at the black churches. I said he comes down as speaking down to black people,” Jackson said.

In a recent Father’s Day speech at a black church, Obama took absent black fathers to task, saying, “We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child — it’s the courage to raise one.”

While Jackson didn’t cite any particular comment, he told CNN that Obama’s message to black voters must be broader and serve as more than a “moral challenge.”

The black community is faced with high levels of unemployment, home foreclosures and violence, “so we have some real serious issues — not just moral issues,” he said.

However, Jackson said after finding out about the open microphone, he immediately contacted the Obama campaign to apologize.

Burton, Obama’s spokesman, said the senator is quite familiar with the issues facing African-Americans and that “he will continue to speak out about our responsibilities to ourselves.”

In the last several years, notorious racists such as former Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox and Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina left this Earth, and in efforts to show the humanity of both, tributes poured in, speaking to their Christian faith and unyielding conservative values.

Vice President Dick Cheney spoke warmly of Thurmond at his 2003 funeral, citing his run for president in 1948. But Cheney failed to mention that he ran as an ardent segregationist.

I recall former Sen. Zell Miller holding up a Bible belonging to Maddox as he told the world about Maddox’s wonderful faith, never citing how he used that same Bible to deny African-Americans basic rights.

Oh, such good Christian men Maddox and Thurmond were.

Now they are joined in the conservative wing of heaven by former Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who died July 4. I’m sure a freedom-loving man such as Helms wouldn’t have it any other way: meeting his maker on the same day the United States celebrates its independence.

The tributes were endless and laudatory, hailing him for being a “conservative champion,” according to a piece in USA Today. Some mentioned his opposition to various issues of race, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Even the Rev. Billy Graham, often called “America’s pastor,” honored Helms in a 174-word statement, ending it by saying that folks “honor his legendary life and extraordinary legacy.”

But to recognize Helms properly in his totality, it’s important to add to the list of words and phrases to describe the unapologetic conservative Republican: unabashedly racist.

It’s easy in this age to say that Helms, who carried his dislike of African- Americans like a badge of honor for 30 years around the U.S. Senate, was a son of the South who was simply honoring good, old-fashioned Southern values. But when you stand in opposition to a bill that would, for the first time, give African-Americans from border to border the constitutionally guaranteed right to cast a vote, then I refuse to call you a stand-up person for the rights of every man, woman and child.

And don’t try to suggest that because Helms hired several African-Americans in his office that he was still a good and decent guy who was misunderstood. No, he was very clear in how he looked at issues, and if you had the wrong skin color, sorry, but you didn’t fully count as an American.

As the tributes came in, I wonder if anyone had the audacity to ask former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun what she thought of Helms.

Once when she was on the elevator and he saw her, Helms started to sing “Dixie,” a call-to-arms song for lovers of the Old South, and clearly an offensive song to anyone black. He later said he did it hoping it would make her cry.

The two also didn’t see eye to eye on the Confederate flag. She was an ardent opponent; he a devout proponent.

It was no surprise that when she was appointed to be a U.S. ambassador by President Clinton, who was her chief blocker? Good ol’ Jesse.

Look at the effort to integrate the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by Clinton. Helms was steadfast in his effort to block an African-American’s appointment to the seat. He and others claimed it was because the court didn’t need an additional judge and spending the money was wasteful. But it was evident that Helms didn’t want an African-American sitting on what some called the most conservative federal appeals court in the nation.

And no one can forget the overt racism he displayed when running for re-election for the U.S. Senate against former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt in 1990 and 1996. Realizing he could lose in 1990, Helms agreed to an ad by Republican strategist Alex Castellanos that showed a white hand destroying a job application with an announcer saying that person needed the job but it was given to a minority.

It worked with the bigots in North Carolina. That ad put Helms over the top and kept his Senate seat safe.

Did Jesse Helms have his convictions? Sure. But an ideological conviction displayed in the political arena doesn’t mean we are to overlook a history of denying Americans their rights based on race.

Give Helms credit for ushering in a new brand of conservatism in the country. But don’t let that cover up his racism.

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He finally got a second chance when he showed up at a construction site looking for work and found a sympathetic builder.

Now, the city of Philadelphia is making a concerted effort to encourage the hiring of ex-convicts amid a renewed interest nationwide in dealing with high recidivism, growing crime rates and exploding prison populations.

Philadelphia averaged a murder a day the past two years and has been sued to reduce its overcrowded, record-high jail population.

So, on his 100th day in office last month, Mayor Michael Nutter announced a program, being headed by an ex-offender, that gives $10,000 a year in municipal tax credits to companies that hire former prisoners and provide them tuition support or vocational training.

“This is one of the best crime-prevention programs we’ll ever have,” he said.

Initiatives to help former prisoners re-enter society have become a renewed priority across the country as new data shine a spotlight on staggering rates of incarceration and recidivism.

For the first time in U.S. history, more than one of every 100 adults is in jail or prison, a study released in February found. Federal data show that about 700,000 people are released from state and federal prisons each year.

Michael Thompson, director of the Council of State Governments Justice Center, said the level of interest in finding ways to keep ex-prisoners from repeat offenses is unprecedented. “It’s really quite extraordinary,” he said.

Philadelphia, Baltimore, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois; and San Francisco, California, are among cities with agencies already dedicated to ex-offenders; states including Oregon and Oklahoma established councils last year to study re-entry policies.

In April, President Bush signed the Second Chance Act, which authorizes more than $330 million over two years to help government agencies and nonprofit groups lower recidivism.

“The spending on corrections is consuming a larger and larger percentage of state and local budgets,” Thompson said. “When you’re spending it on this, you’re not spending it on other government priorities.”

Philadelphia spends about $30,000 a year to house each of its more than 9,000 inmates.

“You don’t have to be a CPA to do the math,” said Ronald Cuie, director of the mayor’s Office for the Re-entry of Ex-offenders. “The investment on re-entry has a hard-dollar return.”

Cuie himself is an example of successful re-entry, having served more than three years in prison for an aggravated assault fueled by drug and alcohol addiction. Now clean and sober, he still reports to a probation officer.

The scope of the ex-offender problem in Philadelphia was detailed in a report last fall that showed about 40,000 former inmates return to the city annually from federal, state and local incarceration.

At any given time, according to the study by the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice, the city of 1.4 million is home to 200,000 to 400,000 ex-cons, many in need of not only jobs but also education, health care and addiction counseling.

The study cites federal statistics showing that nearly two out of every three inmates released from state or federal prison are expected to be rearrested within three years.

“The overwhelming majority want to start a new chapter in life,” said lead author Ram Cnaan, a professor and associate dean of the school. “But it’s difficult.”

Former inmate Nixon, 51, of Philadelphia, said it was frustrating to be told repeatedly that he would be considered for a job, when he knew he wouldn’t.

“They say, ‘Well, you can sign the application; the manager will call you,’ ” Nixon said. The calls never came.

Ronald Birkmire Jr., 37, of Philadelphia said he had the same experience because of his assault record.

“You might come in with a great résumé … [but] it’s still a struggle sometimes to get a job,” Birkmire said.

Both men found employment with the Gensis Group construction company in Philadelphia. Owner Bill Reddish said he has been hiring ex-offenders for years because of what he described as a feeling of obligation to his community. He intends to apply for the tax credit, which is good for up to three years.

“Growing up in Philadelphia, in an urban environment, you have friends that you’ve grown up with that have maybe made some bad decisions,” Reddish said. “And the stigma of being a convicted felon stays with them throughout the rest of their lives.”

Philadelphia has set aside money for at least 500 potential new hires under the city program, but it’s unclear how many businesses will take advantage.

Some don’t like to publicize their employment of former prisoners. Others, including banks and child-care centers, are restricted from hiring them.

Cuie’s office is also working with the city prison system to start planning for convicts’ re-entries as soon as they are sentenced, rather than waiting until six months before their scheduled releases, as is current practice.

“This city government has a responsibility to extend our hand and make sure that we’re giving people that second chance,” the mayor said.

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