Archive for July 2011

While virtually all President Obama will talk about is the debt ceiling, he took a short break to give an address before the National Council of La Raza on Monday. Calling the audience his “Hermanos y hermanas,” he trumpeted his support of the DREAM Act amnesty, stated his opposition to Arizona’s SB 1070 and all state level immigration laws, and touted his Hispanic appointments—citing Ambassador to the Dominican Republic Raul Yzaguirre, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Obama did not mention one other Hispanic appointment, former La Raza vice president Cecilia Munoz who serves as his Director of Intergovernmental Affairs and his public liaison to Hispanics. In appointing Munoz, Obama violated his own pledge not to allow former lobbyists positions where they control money they formerly controlled, and gave Munoz a special waiver.

While our nation is going broke, the National Council of La Raza is doing just fine. Since Obama and Munoz took up the white house, they have seen their funding skyrocket, nearly tripling from 4.5 to 11 million dollars in 2010. Judicial Watch also found out that the La Raza affiliate, Chicanos por la Causa received over 18 million dollars of tax dollars. That group was the primary plaintiff against Arizona’s law against illegal employers.

And it is not as if La Raza is lacking funds. Between their various sister organizations, they have over 200 million dollars in assets, much of it paid for by corporate America, and Chicanos por la Causa have nearly 100 million dollars.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette says he’ll meet a Friday deadline to ask an entire appeals court to uphold the state’s ban on affirmative action in college admissions and government hiring.

Schuette said Thursday that a recent 2-1 decision that struck down the law was “nutty.” He says there’s nothing illegal about a law that prohibits discrimination.

Michigan voters in 2006 approved a constitutional amendment that bars the consideration of race, gender and ethnicity. But a panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law treats minorities unfairly.

Schuette, a Republican, will ask the court’s 15 active judges to reopen the case. It’s rare for the full court to set aside the work of one of its three-judge panels.

Gabon president Ali Bongo with French president Nicolas Sarkozy

Scores of the most luxurious houses and flats in the French capital are now owned by men who regularly receive vast handouts – including British cash via European funding.

They include Ali Bongo, President of Gabon, with at least 39 properties, and Denis Sassou-Nguesso, President of the Republic of the Congo, who has 16.

The portfolio of Teodoro Obiang Nguema, president of Equatorial Guinea, includes a six-floor period building on the prestigious Avenue Foch worth at least £15million.

It is used by his family on shopping trips in France, while Obiang Nguema – who came to power in a bloody 1979 coup – prefers to occupy a £2,000-plus-a-night suite at the Plaza ­Athenee Hotel, off the chic Champs Elysee.

The astonishing details are in a report handed to Paris prosecutors by anti-corruption groups Transparency International and Sherpa. They are also investigating claims that Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt – both deposed in the Arab Spring – retain numerous homes in France.

Capitol Hill residents are being warned of repeated street robberies, some involving baseball bats.

On Thursday night, Denver police report that eight to 10 black men robbed three white men in the alley off 14th Avenue between Humboldt and Lafayette streets.

Early Tuesday morning, a group of men robbed a man walking alone near 10th Avenue and Grant Street.

Based on the descriptions given by the victim in the Grant Street robbery, police tracked down the suspects at Civic Center Park. Eight people were questioned, and four were arrested.

About 30 minutes after the Grant Street robbery, a group of men robbed another man walking alone near 11th Avenue and Corona Street.

A field specialist for Tulane University has filed a lawsuit that claims he lost his job due to racial discrimination.

Claiming violations of his civil rights, Bruce Mears, who is caucasian, filed suit against Tulane University on July 27 in federal court in New Orleans.

Mears was hired by the University in September 2006 as a salaried employed until January 2008, when he became an hourly employee.

He states his supervisor, an African American female, only allowed him to bill 37.5 hours per week, even if he worked overtime. The supervisor is accused of forging Mears’ signature on a time sheet. Mears states that he worked an extra project at the request of his supervisor in June and July 2009 but he was later told that due to budget restraints, he would not be paid overtime wages but be allowed to use the time as comp time. After he filed a complaint with the EEOC in 2010, he received his overtime pay.

You’ve probably heard of the term “flash mob.” It’s when groups of people use social media to pick a place to meet up and often sing a song or do a dance. Usually, those gatherings are fun.

But, some are turning violent. It’s happening all over the nation in places like Chicago, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. Now, it’s happening right here in the Triad.

Greensboro police say mobs of violent teens are meeting up on the weekends and wreaking havoc downtown. Police say it’s getting worse each weekend.

This past weekend, a former mayor had his business vandalized and another community leader got beat up in Center City Park.

“One of the teenagers came up from behind and just punched me in the back and kicked me and knocked me to the floor. Then, he just continued to kick me, punch me, step on me. People were screaming,” Mitchel Sommers, executive director of the Community Theatre of Greensboro said.

While NAACP President Benjamin Jealous lashed out at new state laws requiring photo ID for voting, an NAACP executive sits in prison, sentenced for carrying out a massive voter fraud scheme.

In a story ignored by the national media, in April a Tunica County, Miss., jury convicted NAACP official Lessadolla Sowers on 10 counts of fraudulently casting absentee ballots. Sowers is identified on an NAACP website as a member of the Tunica County NAACP Executive Committee.

Sowers received a five-year prison term for each of the 10 counts, but Circuit Court Judge Charles Webster permitted Sowers to serve those terms concurrently, according to the Tunica Times, the only media outlet to cover the sentencing.

“This crime cuts against the fabric of our free society,” Judge Webster said.

Sowers was found guilty of voting in the names of Carrie Collins, Walter Howard, Sheena Shelton, Alberta Pickett, Draper Cotton and Eddie Davis. She was also convicted of voting in the names of four dead persons: James L. Young, Dora Price, Dorothy Harris, and David Ross.

After seven years of litigation, Mayor John DeStefano Jr.’s administration finalized a settlement agreement to pay over $2 million to the 20 firefighters behind the bias suit that brought New Haven to the forefront of a national discussion on racial discrimination.

Twenty firefighters, 19 of whom are Caucasian and one is Hispanic, filed a lawsuit alleging reverse racial discrimination when passing grades in a New Haven Fire Department test for promotion were thrown out. Although both the U.S. District Court and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld New Haven’s decision to throwout the test results, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters in 2009.

New Haven will pay the firefighters a combined total of $2 million over the next two years and each complainant’s pension plan will be treated as if he had been on the service for an extra three years, according to a Wednesday press release from City Hall spokesman Adam Joseph. The plaintiffs’ teams of attorneys, who took the litigation from District Court to the Supreme Court, will receive $3 million, according to the release. These payments, which were individually agreed upon by each of the complainants, mark the end to a long saga of public relations woes for the DeStefano administration — not only was the city faulted for discriminating against the mostly Caucasian firefighters who were not promoted in rank after their test scores were invalidated, but some have cited the prolonged legal battle as fiscally detrimental to a city struggling economically.

These payments constitute a complete admission of guilt for City Hall, as there will be no further attempt to prevent damage payments. This follows a June 29, 2009 Supreme Court decision in which a narrow five to four margin found that the City had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

A Valley man whose job took him across the border daily says his life was threatened by the Mexican drug cartel.

The job was just too risky. The man says his life is worth more than a paycheck. The Zetas, the Gulf Cartel, this man has been threatened by both.

“We need to ask permission of the cartels to see the cars. It was ridiculous. We arrived and the police weren’t there, but the cartel members were. To go inside, you had to get them to say it’s OK,” the man says.

He asked us to conceal his identity. He was a repo man for Texas insurance companies, a job that brought him into Mexico daily. His mission was to recover stolen cars.