Archive for May 2011
The Buzz: Recognizing ethnic studies stirs Assembly debate
Incumbent Yvonne Walker has won re-election as president of SEIU Local 1000 over challenger Tim Chaney.
At first glance, the issue seemed simple enough: a non-binding resolution that registers support for ethnic studies curriculums at California’s three public university systems.
But in the hands of the state Assembly, the measure turned into a sometimes testy, nearly hourlong debate.
Assemblyman Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, pushed Assembly Concurrent Resolution 34 backing ethnic studies programs as CSU, UC and state community colleges are deciding how to collectively cut more than $1 billion from their budgets.
Assemblywoman Diane Harkey, R-Dana Point, said she was concerned that the Legislature would be “setting something as a higher priority.”
Leniency, and then crackdown on black employee’s misconduct to avoid reverse discrimination claims, do not prove race discrimination or retaliation
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, which reviews federal court decisions in Colorado, has ruled that an employer’s past leniency or tolerance of an African-American employee’s misconduct does not forever preclude it from disciplining such continued behavior, and does not make the employee’s ongoing misconduct a pretext for race discrimination or retaliation. The Court also held that an employer’s expressed intention to prevent reverse discrimination claims by enforcing policies even-handedly among all employees, including those in a protected class, is not evidence of discrimination. Crowe v. ADT Security Svcs., Inc., No. 10-1298 (10th Cir. April 25, 2011).
In the span of one month, multiple complaints of sexual harassment, unprofessional behavior, and insubordination were made against a male, African-American employee. At approximately the same time, the employee complained to a manager about the lack of black employees in management. Human Resources investigated his complaint and found no basis for his allegations. HR also investigated the complaints of harassment and misconduct and found them to be well-founded. The employee was given a final, written warning, and was informed he would be terminated from employment if another incident of harassment, unprofessional behavior, or insubordination occurred.
Several months later, Human Resources received yet more complaints about the employee’s misconduct. The HR representative who investigated the allegations wrote a report listing twenty-three disciplinary incidents dating back eight years, including five separate complaints of sexual harassment.
Food-stamp fraud: Detroit-area stores swipe millions from aid program
The New Michigan Food Center is seen in Detroit, Jan. 15, 2010. Federal agents allege that the exotic drug khat was sold in exchange for swiping payments off food-stamp cards at the grocery store.
Two undercover informants entered Jefferson’s Liquor Palace and spotted the owner at the register. “Big baby,” said one, “we gon’ do this?”
The man behind the counter provided $50 in cash, two bottles of liquor, two porn DVDs and two Viagra pills — all in exchange for taking $280.85 off a food-stamp card, say federal investigators who recorded the deal.
Fraud in the government program that helps the poor has added up to nearly $100 million since 2007, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. It’s a fraction of the more than $40 billion spent to feed people each year, but the crime has become a brazen way for some small stores to literally swipe cash from the U.S. Treasury, especially in the Detroit area.
There have been at least 122 fraud-related convictions of owners or employees in the five-state Midwest region since 2007, nearly double the number from 2004-06, says USDA, which oversees the welfare program. About half of those have occurred in southeastern Michigan.
Among the latest cases: A store west of downtown Detroit is accused of selling bags of the exotic chewy drug khat in exchange for food-stamp benefits. Agents in another investigation discovered that cash was wired to Somalia and other countries.
“You have a money machine on your counter. It’s a crime of opportunity. We see a lot of cases,” said Sheldon Light, head of the economic-crimes unit at the U.S. attorney’s office in Detroit.
California Teacher Fights Back Against His Union’s Support of Cop Killer
A few weeks ago I brought you the story of the California Federation of Teachers passing a resolution “reaffirming” support for convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. He was convicted of killing, execution-style, Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Despite numerous appeals and efforts by far leftists to spring him from prison, he’s serving a life sentence in an open-and-shut case.
The Fraternal Order of Police issued a strongly-worded letter to American Federation of Teachers’ President Randi Weingarten, parent union to the CFT.
The union’s absurdly radical action is now producing its consequences.
I received an email from a CFT and AFT member resigning his union membership over the kerfuffle. He wrote in part:
“Having given the matter considerable thought, I have decided to resign from our labor union, an affiliate of the CFT and the AFT. I have already instructed [an administrative staff member] in Davenport to stop deducting dues from my paycheck. I feel some responsibility for briefly explaining the reasons for this difficult decision.
“I did not especially think this faculty needed to unionize when the idea for that came forward, but I did vote in favor of it, in support of the majority of faculty that did think this worthwhile. I did so with the understanding our union would stick to our immediate educational and terms of employment issues at [our school]. Indeed, our local has pretty much done a good job of that, except for having used tactics during the last round of labor negotiations that I rejected as long ago as 1968 as a college student. No, the end did not justify the means. I will leave it at that. “
Dependency and Votes
Those who regard government “entitlement” programs as sacrosanct, and regard those who want to cut them back as calloused or cruel, picture a world very different from the world of reality.
To listen to some of the defenders of entitlement programs, which are at the heart of the present financial crisis, you might think that anything the government fails to provide is something that people will be deprived of.
In other words, if you cut spending on school lunches, children will go hungry. If you fail to subsidize housing, people will be homeless. If you fail to subsidize prescription drugs, old people will have to eat dog food in order to be able to afford their meds.
This is the vision promoted by many politicians and much of the media. But, in the world of reality, it is not even true for most people who are living below the official poverty line.
Most Americans living below the official poverty line own a car or truck– and government entitlement programs seldom provide cars and trucks. Most people living below the official poverty line also have air conditioning, color television and a microwave oven–and these too are not usually handed out by government entitlement programs.
Far-right Catalans making waves across crisis-hit Spain
It’s a blunt campaign message - a video shows three attractive young women in miniskirts skipping with a rope in the Spanish city of Igualada, to the accompaniment of a traditional Catalan folk song. Suddenly, the image changes to “Igualada 2015″ and shows three women dressed in burkas skipping to the rhythm of an Arab song.
“You can avoid this nightmare becoming reality. In Igualada, vote Plataforma per Catalunya,” the video concludes.
Plataforma per Catalunya is a far-right party created nine years ago by former supporters of General Francisco Franco in the north-eastern industrial province of Catalonia, and running in Sunday’s regional elections in Spain.
Last year the party gained almost 3 per cent of the vote in the regional elections and now expects to increase its local vote five-fold, going from 17 to more than 100 council members across Catalonia and possibly winning control of some cities.
Plataforma per Catalunya is riding a growing wave of anti-immigration sentiment, where many blame foreigners - 12 per cent of the Spanish population - for rising crime and a lack of jobs, in a country with 20 per cent official unemployment.
Austria far-right tops opinion polls
The FPOe would secure 29 percent of the votes if there were a general election on Sunday, overtaking for the first time the Social Democrats with 28 pecent and the conservative People’s Party or OeVP with 23 percent, according to a poll by the OGM institute on behalf of the daily Kurier.
The environmentalist Green party and another far-right party, the BZOe, would each win 13 percent of the votes.
The current coalition government under Social Democrat Chancellor Werner Faymann, which took power in December 2008, is made up of the Social Democrats and OeVP parties in a power-sharing deal.
The head of the OGM institute, Wolfgang Bachmayer, attributed the FPOe’s current strength, not only to a wider disillusionment with politics, but with the current coalition government in particular.
Furthermore, “the showings have undoubtedly been influenced by the current debate over the statements by Erste Bank chief executive Andreas Treichl, the euro crisis and the Greek debt crisis,” Bachmayer told the newspaper.
Judge blocks naming San Antonio street for Cesar Chavez
A judge on Monday blocked the city of San Antonio from renaming a street after the late labor activist Cesar Chavez.
The temporary restraining order from State District Judge Antonia Arteaga came just days after the City Council voted along ethnic lines to approve the name change.
The proposal to rename Durango Street, one of the city’s main streets, has divided a city where 61 percent of residents are Hispanic.
Racial alert over ethnic policing bid
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland meets with leaders of the Newport muslim community
Ethnic and community groups warn a Victoria Police decision to dump its multicultural advisory unit is a recipe for fresh racial tensions.
In a move instigated by Chief Commissioner Simon Overland, the unit’s specialists officers will be farmed out to the police’s regional divisions.
Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe denied Victoria Police was abandoning its work with ethnic communities. He said a near-completed review of the operations co-ordination department - which worked with indigenous communities, multicultural communities, gay and lesbian groups, youth and victims of crime - had concluded it would be better to send its special advisers to four police regions.
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A new centralised ”multidisciplinary” team, to be known as the community engagement policy research and strategy unit, will instead be responsible for providing intelligence and advice to senior command.
Mexico mass graves of 219 signal major cartel rift
In this picture taken Monday May 16, 2011, a truck sits inside a junkyard where more than 41 bodies were found buried in a mass grave, in Durango, Mexico. In the past two months, 219 bodies have been found in this city in at least seven clandestine mass graves.
The vacant car repair lot hardly looks out of place in a vibrant but gritty part of the northern colonial city of Durango, famous as the set for John Wayne westerns.
Only a closer look reveals the secrets hidden at “Servicios Multiples Carita Medina,” clues to exactly what kind of “multiple services” were rendered. The freshly turned soil is sprinkled with lime to kill the smell and littered with discarded Latex gloves and an empty cardboard box: “Adult Cadaver Bag. 600 gauge, Long Zipper, For Cadavers of up to 75 inches. 15 pieces.”
In the most gruesome find in Mexico’s four-year attack on organized crime, police dug up 89 bodies in the repair lot, buried over time in plain sight of homes, schools and stores.
Then, like the killers, authorities left one of Mexico’s most puzzling crime scenes completely open and unprotected.
